


The Devil Walks In Bright Winter

by BigSciencyBrain, crystallized-iron (Somiko_Raven)



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Animal Death, Canon-Typical Violence, Captain America Reverse Big Bang 2018, Gen, Imprisonment, Minor Character Death, Physical Abuse, Winter Soldier origin story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-26
Updated: 2018-06-26
Packaged: 2019-05-29 03:43:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 23,602
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15064385
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BigSciencyBrain/pseuds/BigSciencyBrain, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Somiko_Raven/pseuds/crystallized-iron
Summary: Bucky Barnes falls from a train in the Alps. What emerges from an underground bunker in a frozen wasteland is someone, or something, else.





	1. Chapter 1

He smelled the pine sap cracking in the thin, cold air and the wet stone bordering the river where the ice couldn’t keep hold, sloughing off at the edges as the water tumbled by. Wind tugged at the crags in the cliff face, whistling through gaps like a mourning dove. It stirred a vague, washed out memory of crawling away from the river, away from the cliffs.

Up had been impossible; sheer rock covered with ice and snow. Basic instinct had driven him to find shelter. Away from the water, away from the rocks; out of the blinding snow. He’d crawled until he felt the snow give under his fingers, heard the snapping pine needles. Everything else was lost in the blinding sunlight glinting off the snow; how long it had been, where he was, how he’d gotten there. There was a dull ache in everything except his numb fingers and toes. He’d seen men lose those to frostbite, knew what that looked like.

There was a war going on, somewhere beyond this narrow stand of pine trees; he knew that in the lucid moments that came and went. A war with guns and fire and a man with a blood red skull where his face should’ve been.

They’d win. He believed that; he had faith. The war would end and they’d go home again. Even if he wouldn’t be there to see it.

Fresh pain in his left shoulder woke him. He had no sense of time, of how long he’d slept. He was standing still on the thin line between alive and dead, settled in a groove of being something else. It felt like time had stopped and the world had moved on without him.

There was a squawk in his ear, another tug sending more pain lancing through his numb body. With effort, he turned and squinted at the blurred shape against the daylight. Feathers, a long sharp beak. Raven? He wondered hazily. He watched it hop a few inches further away, its beak darting out to pick and tear at something lying in the snow beside him. It took long, torturous minutes for his brain to process the unnatural angle of his left arm, the white of shattered bone through torn flesh and cloth. The snow beneath him was painted a dull red with spent blood.

“Could wait,” he rasped, his voice jagged against his throat. “‘Til I’m all the way dead. Stupid bird.” It couldn’t be much longer if he was attracting hungry wildlife. Other than the pain in his shoulder, he couldn’t feel the rest of his body. 

He closed his eyes again, unable to chase the raven away from what was left of his arm. Might as well have some good come from his death, even if it was just a meal for a hungry bird. By the time they found him, if they ever did, he’d be a set of tags and a pile of bones dressed in worn out rags. He chose to believe they’d gotten Zola after he’d fallen, that they were winning the War as he lay dying in the snow. 

There was barely enough moisture in his mouth to wet his numb, chapped lips with his tongue. The cold was doing him one favor; he barely felt the pain, or anything else. It might be painless, if not quick, to freeze to death when night came. But it seemed like he’d been lying there for longer than a day already. His face was too cold to respond, his mind sluggish. No matter how much he tried to pull his thoughts into order, everything after the terrifying plunge from the train was either blank or too blurred with pain to make sense. There was no time, just the wind through the trees and the occasional squawk of the raven dining on his mangled arm.

“Sergeant Barnes,” came a whispered voice, terrible in its familiarity.

He jerked, eyes coming open with effort. Nothing but trees; no one but the raven. Hallucinating, he thought. His brain misfiring as he died and dredging up old memories.

The voice whispered again, sounding so close that Zola could have been kneeling beside him. “The procedure has already started.”

He squeezed his eyes shut as tight as his unresponsive body let him, not wanting to see Zola bending over him with his needles. Experimenting. He remembered the horror that had slithered down his back, lying on that table and realizing Zola didn’t even have a purpose for what he was doing. It was just an experiment, just injecting a nameless soldier for the sake of seeing what happened next. He thought he’d seen the worst of HYDRA when Schmidt peeled his face off to reveal the nightmare underneath; had Zola done that too?

“Sergeant Barnes.”

“Go away,” he mumbled, his tongue swollen against the roof of his mouth and garbling the words. The raven was his only company and he refused to spend the last minutes of his life listening to HYDRA’s mad scientist. Zola couldn’t be here; he’d been on the train. He held onto that thought like it was the only remaining thread of his sanity.

Consciousness came and went. He thought he felt another pull at his left shoulder, more of his arm falling away, becoming food for the raven or some other creature. Through the haze, he recognized the trees above him, the chattering of his own teeth when he woke up shaking and seizing in the dark of night. A wolf howling in the distance, still far away. He wondered how much more he was expected to endure before death finally came to take him; he was ready now and the long wait was a cruel punishment.

The sharp crack of breaking branches woke him briefly. There was motion. He thought he was moving but couldn’t make sense of why or how. A glimpse of red on white snow, part of his mangled left arm completely gone now. Zola kept whispering in his ear, leaning over him, real and not real at the same time, morphing into a pine branch when he tried to force his eyes to focus on Zola’s face. There were other voices, but they must be the wind and the raven calling as he died. It wasn’t anything like he’d thought it would be, dying. Nothing like anyone had told him, that he’d ever heard in a sermon or read about in any book. He wasn’t watching his own life replay before his eyes. Instead, he got glimpses of light and sound, the roar of an engine and the smell of motor oil. The iron grip of cold began to loosen around his chest.

He breathed in like coming up for air out of an icy lake. How long had it been since he’d taken a breath? The action registered as filling his lungs, stretching the muscles in his chest, and the pain of fractured ribs like needles in his sides. Pain and breath forced an irreconcilable truth to his attention; he was still alive.

Pins and needles crept into his limbs. How many toes and fingers would he lose to the ice? He thought he could feel his feet so maybe he wouldn’t lose those. As he thawed, tremors came in waves, his body trying to shake off the cold but unable to find any warmth but what he could make himself. The shaking awoke new hurts in old wounds. He thought he could feel the bones in his legs knitting back together in wrenching stabs, but that was insane. Broken bones took weeks and months to heal, not hours or days. How long had it been?

Water dripped between his lips, pooling in his mouth until his swollen tongue eased enough for it to reach his throat. It tasted stale, slightly metallic, as though it had been in a canteen for a long time, but otherwise normal. He swallowed automatically and he could feel how desperately thirsty his body was, like a fever burning under his skin.

Water. Motion. Voices.

He kept his eyes closed. He doubted he would’ve been able to move even if he’d wanted to, but the water, the motion, the voices; the combination meant he’d been found. His fevered brain and ears couldn’t pick out words, couldn’t turn them into a language he recognized. He couldn’t make a move until he knew who they were. If they were giving him water, they could be friendly, but he couldn’t be sure. With broken bones and down an arm, he was in no condition to fight. So he had to be sure.

The water stopped after awhile. Motion continued. He drifted in and out of consciousness, once waking long enough to realize he was being carried on a stretcher. He could feel the sway and shift as the stretcher traced out mismatched human footsteps. Tight pinching on his legs and his left shoulder made him wonder if they’d splinted his legs and bound up what remained of his arm. Would they bother with his wounds if they weren’t friendly? He strained to catch the garbled snatches of conversation, for a single word that would reveal the language. German? French? It all sounded like the calling of the raven who’d been his only companion in the valley.

There was a face once, when his eyes slipped open between ragged breaths. A pale face looming over him; a man wearing an unfamiliar uniform. Not Zola. Buzzing in his ears washed out the man’s words. He tried to remember the mission briefing before the train, tried to remember where they’d marked troop movements on the map. How far had his unknown rescuers taken him? He had no grasp of how long it had been. When he focused, he could wiggle his toes and there was only a dull ache along his calf where he thought he’d broken the bones.

When he finally woke with his mind relatively clear, he stayed still and listened, feeling the vibrations beneath him. The motion was steady and smooth. A train, he thought with a twist of unease in his stomach. He realized he was hungry as well, for the first time since before they’d headed out to capture Zola. He was hungry, tired, and his body ached, but it wasn’t the same haze of pain and injury. That fever had finally broken. He tried to raise his right hand and felt a tug around his wrist, pulling him up short. Metal scraped, clanging softly. Twisting his wrist, he recognized the feel of a metal band around it. He was chained to the surface beneath him. Careful movements alerted him to two more metal bands around his ankles. His head spun when he raised it - for the first time in how long? - and he saw heavy bandaging around what used to be his left elbow and upper arm, with nothing at all below.

They’d bandaged his wounds so he was worth more to them alive than dead, but they also didn’t want him going anywhere. He had to assume his mysterious rescuers weren’t entirely friendly, had to be careful. Hunger gnawed at him, more insistent now that he was awake. If they didn’t want him dead, he figured they’d feed him eventually.

Engine noise and the sound of metal against metal flooded into the compartment when the door behind him opened. He craned his neck and saw another unfamiliar man, wearing another light beige, unfamiliar uniform. More aware now, he noted the fur trim on the man’s collar and hat. A uniform meant to withstand the cold then. He scanned the man for anything that could be an insignia or a symbol, anything that could tell him where they were and who the man represented. The lack of any identifying markings was frightening in a different way. What army or organization wouldn’t want to be recognized?

The man set a thin metal tray on a camp chair beside him and leaned over to unhook a loop of metal anchoring the chain on his right hand. He said nothing and his manner was indifferent. There was a bowl of porridge and a tin cup of water on the tray.

Licking his lips, he forced his mouth to work. “Who are you?” It came out hoarse and thick, his voice rusted from lack of use.

Without answering, the man turned away and left the compartment as quickly as he’d come in. He discovered that without the loop of metal, he had enough length in the chain to reach the tray. The porridge was lukewarm and lumpy, sticking in his throat, but he gulped it down and licked the bowl clean. His stomach clenched and twinged against the sudden expansion, having been empty for far too long, and he had to wait until it settled before reaching for the tin cup. Again, the water had a faint metallic taste.

As the hunger pangs abated, he tried to look around the compartment. He was lying on a cot anchored to the floor. There were more like his along both sides, making him wonder if this had been intended for troop transfers. It was hardly a luxury accommodation, meant to get larger numbers of people to destination with the bare minimum of comfort. Without windows, he couldn’t get any idea of where they were, but there was a chill emanating from the walls. That and the stranger’s uniform pointed to the far north or the high mountains. Exhausting the environment around him, he turned his attention to himself.

There were stiff, dark stains on his uniform, covering most of his legs and his entire left side. His boots were intact, still laced tight. As he shifted, he wrinkled his nose, movement and body heat releasing a foul smell from his own clothes and body. Maybe they would bring him a change of clothes. Layers of skin would probably peel off along with the wool once he was finally able to change his socks. 

His limbs began to feel heavy again. He dropped his head back down, swaying with the train beneath him. The fatigue creeping over him felt unnatural, but he brushed those paranoid thoughts aside. He’d been unconscious for days. He couldn’t expect his first time fully conscious to last long. If they wanted him dead, they could’ve left him in the valley for the ravens. They’d taken him for a reason, kept him alive for a reason. While he doubted the reason was a benevolent one, it didn’t matter. As long as he was alive, no matter what their plans for him, he had a chance.

The concept of time and days disappeared. 

He woke once, smelling urine but unable to move his limbs, and barely managed to wrinkle his nose at the fact that he’d pissed himself before he lapsed back into oblivion. Once more he woke up to find a tray with another bowl of cold porridge and a tin cup of water. This time there was a bucket beside his cot and enough slack in his chains to roll onto his side, fumbling his trousers open enough to relieve himself. He thought the train might have been stopped that time, but couldn’t be sure.

When he came awake somewhere other than the cot on a mysterious train, it was a narrow room with no windows. There was a bare lightbulb over the single door and a primitive sink and toilet bowl bolted to the wall. He wasn’t chained this time. The only other object was a heavy wool blanket between him and the stone floor. 

As his brain struggled to function, he pushed up to a seated position and pressed his back against the wall. So this had been their endgame; a prison cell. Judging from the sink and the toilet bowl, they didn’t plan on letting him out often. There was a hatch in the door where he guessed more trays of horrible porridge would be passed through whenever they decided to feed him. His uniform was rank with sweat, dried blood, and urine. He fumbled with the remaining strips of stiff fabric around the bandaged stump of his left arm. At least it didn’t smell like the wound had gotten infected and the pain had faded to a dull throb.

With his back to the wall, he felt safer even though he knew, objectively, that he was as unsafe as he’d ever been in his life. Maybe they hadn’t wanted him dead yet, but they could change their minds without warning. That fear was a dark bank of storm clouds forever looming on the horizon. He was a prisoner of war now. Again. He doubted this time would end the same as his first stint with Zola. They would’ve believed him dead after a fall like that and there was a war on. Other priorities. They wouldn’t be able to take the time to look for his body.

Trying to keep his breathing steady, he pulled his knees up to his chest and wrapped his right arm around them. He wanted to keep the burgeoning fear inside his chest from spilling out and filling the entire room. He’d drown in it; the fear and the gaping pain of realizing that he was utterly alone. There would be no rescue coming, no hope of being found. His family would get a letter, that’s all. They’d move on; the whole world would move on. Breath coming in shudders and gasps, he held tighter to his knees and tried to push those thoughts away. If he gave up, he’d be doing half the work for them, whoever it was outside the door. 

He couldn’t count on a rescue but that didn’t mean it was over. He just had to adjust his strategy, play the long game instead. They could keep him locked in a cell but that didn’t mean they’d beaten him.

As the panic ebbed, he became aware of the tiny noises embedded in the heavy silence. The bulb above the door buzzed with electricity and there was a steady, quiet  _ plink _ of water falling. There was no moisture on the floor. It wasn’t coming from the sink faucet either, but deeper in the plumbing. The walls were concrete rather than carved stone, though the absolute silence and instinct told him that he was underground. 

Picking at the bandages on his stump, he felt his stomach twist, imagining what he’d see if he removed them. He’d work up to that, later. He settled for straightening loose edges and wondering why they’d bothered to bandage him up in the first place. Who could’ve known he was lying in that ravine? There hadn’t been a town or city for miles, just the train winding through treacherous mountains. Had it been lucky chance that he’d been discovered? Or something else. He couldn’t think of a reason why anyone would go through the trouble to look for a dead body, which is what he should’ve been. Unless they knew there was chance he’d survived; unless there was something about him that was valuable even if he had been dead.

When the war ended, would he be left here to rot in this cell or would he be set free to return? To go home. That brought another flood of jumbled emotions. Homesickness, above everything; he wanted to go home with every fiber of his being. Maybe, he thought. He’d survived, improbably, impossibly. The war had to end eventually and if he could just  _ survive, _ he’d be able to go home. It wasn’t comfort as much as a grim determination.

First things first, if he was going to survive captivity, he needed to keep his head on straight and stay as healthy as he could manage. That included hygiene. And it would give him something to do other than curl up on the floor and panic. Very carefully, he worked open the buttons and fastenings of his jacket and wriggled out of it, setting it aside. In any other situation, he would’ve written it off as a lost cause, but his resources were limited. Still, it could wait. There were two layers of lighter weight clothing under that, the under layer stained with sweat but relatively free of blood. Goosebumps rose on his skin as he stripped off the two shirts and pushed himself to his feet. His tags were gone, he realized, fumbling at his neck and chest as thought he’d simply missed them. They’d been tucked under his jacket before the train so he doubted he’d lost them in the fall. Whoever had found him must have taken them. He was unsteady and swayed to the right, surprised by how the loss of his left arm affected his balance.

A thin stream of icy but clear water came out of the sink faucet. He filled his palm three times, drinking enough to wash the sour taste out of his mouth before he started on the shirt. It was slow work but the cloth blocked up the drain enough for the water to puddle and begin to fill the sink. The water turned dark as dirt and sweat leached out of the thin fabric. After three rinses, he thought it was as clean as it was going to get. Wringing it out was another challenge, with only one hand, but he managed, finally spreading the shirt over the edge of the sink where it could dry. There was a metal grate covering a drain in one corner and rivulets of water dripped down from his shirt, following the slope of the floor.

He was shivering already so he pulled his overshirt back on and sunk down on the blanket. It felt loose, like his trousers, as though he’d dressed in clothes a size too big. He felt along his side, counting ribs. How much weight had he lost? He had no sense of how long it had been since the train. Once he’d started, he kept going, feeling out half remembered wounds and broken bones. There was evidence in his clothes, but other than the missing arm and a dull sense of fatigue, he seemed to be intact. Carefully, he reached up to his jaw, fingertips brushing over what felt like a month’s worth of stubble, and tugged hard at his skin. It pinched but didn’t feel like it was in danger of peeling away from his skull to reveal horror underneath. He exhaled sharply with relief. Whatever Zola’s experiments had done to change him hadn’t turned him into a monster.

Lost in thought, he stared at his hand, thinking about the bones and blood vessels under his skin. He’d wondered after Azzano. Wondered if there would be side-effects, wondered what lasting damage he’d have to endure because of Zola. He knew from what he’d been told about Project Rebirth and Doctor Erskine that Zola had been after the same goal; a drug to make perfect soldiers. But Zola had pumped him full of more liquids than he could remember, chemicals that burned in his blood and made him taste metal. No fancy radiation though. Something else then; he was something  _ else. _ It didn’t seem like he could regrow an arm, apparently. That would’ve been useful.

His shirt gradually changed from wet to damp. He was feeling along the edge of a seam when he heard footsteps outside the door. Boots on stone. Immediately, he stood up and backed against the wall, watching the door. Metal scraped against metal as bolts were slid back and the hinges on the door screeched with rust and disuse, making it a struggle for his captors to open it.

Three men entered, all dressed in the same nondescript grey-beige uniform. Two held rifles and kept them trained on Bucky in a silent threat. There were different markings along the collar of the third man; rank, possibly, a way to distinguish him from the others. When he spoke, none of it was recognizable to Bucky, but there were tugs of familiarity. Russian, he thought, but that didn’t make any sense. The Soviets were further east, pushing Hitler back from the Eastern Front. But it wasn’t German, he was sure of that. He kept still, waiting for a clue of why Soviet troops had taken him and if they’d mistaken him for a Nazi soldier. Easy mistake to make; his uniform was hardly regulation, but if they’d taken his tags, they should know he wasn’t.

When the man spoke again, Bucky swallowed. “I don’t understand. English? Do you speak English? I’m American.” He gestured toward himself, hoping that wouldn’t be a mistake. The Soviets were fighting against the Nazis too.

It didn’t seem that any of them spoke English and the two with guns didn’t lower their weapons, but there was a subtle change in their leader’s expression. He gave Bucky a calculating look, then turned away, barking orders at the other men as they fell back through the door. It closed with another protesting screech and Bucky was left alone in the silence.

He didn’t know if he should feel relieved or terrified, but he had the impression they didn’t know what to do with him. He was just as much of an unknown to them as they were to him, which was both opportunity and danger wrapped up together. They must believe he was valuable enough to keep alive. Self-consciously, he rubbed two fingers over his cheekbone, feeling the skin shift but still very much attached to what was underneath.

“Should’ve learned Russian,” he muttered to himself.

The next time he heard footsteps, it was the same two men who entered the cell, still armed but only one of them holding a gun on Bucky. The second man was carrying a small pile of clothes and a metal bucket. They didn’t speak to him, merely delivered the items and left again.

He waited until the footsteps had faded away before moving to inspect the pile. The clothes were plain but clean and sensible; there was even a pair of woolen socks. He wasn’t entirely sure why they’d brought him a bucket but decided to make use of it the best he could. It took what seemed like hours for the thin stream from the faucet to fill the bucket even halfway. He decided that was enough. Settling down on the blanket, he unbuckled his boots and set them aside for later. There was a relatively clean handkerchief stuffed into the bottom of one of his trouser pockets. He worked in stages, soaking the handkerchief in the cold water and rubbing his skin clean of grime and dried blood, starting with his feet. Once his feet were clean, he pulled on the clean socks and worked his way out of the damaged trousers to start on his legs.

The water was black by the time he was clean and fully dressed. He cleaned his boots last, surprised there wasn’t more damage to the leather. Good boots were worth their weight in gold. Dumping the filthy water down the drain took the last of his energy. He held onto the sink to gulp down another couple handfuls of water before sinking down on the blanket. Clean felt better even if he was no less a prisoner. 

He slept fitfully, unable to stay warm with only a blanket between him and the concrete floor siphoning away his body heat. Once, he came awake to find a tray on the floor just inside the door. It was more of the same cold porridge he was used too, along with a small chunk of salted meat, and a tin cup. He filled the cup first, barely patient enough to wait before digging into the porridge, eating so quickly he almost choked on an unchewed piece of meat. He forced himself to slow down and take sips of water between bites.

So they weren’t going to starve him and they’d given him clean clothes, at least until they’d figured out what they wanted from him. It was worlds better than the stories they’d heard about what happened to the people captured by Nazis. 

He eyed the pile of his filthy clothes as he swallowed down the last of the porridge. Step one, get his clothes clean so he could add more layers, maybe use his jacket as a pillow. Step two, find a way to mark time, even if it was nothing more than marking each time they brought him food, assuming they kept to a regular schedule.

Step three: learn Russian.

***

“Another lawyer to see you,” the guard barked, opening the barred door of the cell just enough for Arnim Zola to step through.

He didn’t bother making small talk as he followed the guard down the narrow corridor to one of the claustrophobic interview rooms. Interview, indeed; he wasn’t so naïve. Part of his agreement in accepting the terms of Operation Paperclip was full disclosure of his work, his assets, and his contacts developed during the course of his research. He saw no reason not to cooperate with the Strategic Scientific Reserve, primitive as they were. 

There was an unfamiliar man waiting for him in the room and although the guard closed the door and left them alone, the mirror along the east wall gave only the illusion of privacy. His every move and every word were monitored.

“Dr. Zola,” the man began without preamble. There was a trace of an accent in the man’s voice. Russian, he thought. “I have here a list of holdings to be reviewed. Most items are of no significant value or import, but it is,” the man’s gaze flickered toward the glass, “necessary to determine accurately.”

The paper whispered as the man slid it across the table. Arnim settled himself on the chair and leaned forward, lifting his chin to better see through his glasses as he peered down at the paper. For the most part, the list was vague and appeared to be no more than the contents of a modest home. Furniture, a few pieces of art and silver; as the man had said, little of import.

“There is one piece.” The man reached out with a pen to tap at one of the lines, indicating a series of numbers and three letters.  _ 32557038: SJB. _ “Recovered outside Vienna. Value cannot be determined unless you can confirm provenance.”

Arnim kept his expression one of careful, but blank, thought. “What condition is it in? Perhaps it is not worth the effort.” He could scarcely believe it to be true. How? They had all seemed so certain that the man had been lost. But one of his experiments had succeeded, after a fashion, and he struggled to keep his eagerness in check. He knew the SSR would never allow him access, not knowingly or willingly. Even bringing him this list for confirmation was a bold move, right under the SSR’s nose. He wondered who the man truly represented.

“Damaged. It appears to have been exposed to the elements and perhaps frozen for a time, and there a critical part is missing, but that is recoverable, with suitable expertise. If the item is genuine, there is an interested party willing to purchase.” He shot another glance toward the glass. “Unless, of course, a reasonable claim can be made by your hosts. Though it seems unlikely that they are interested in cultural artifacts.”

Beneath his calm exterior, Arnim’s mind was whirling. Damaged; frozen but still alive. He thought of the headlines and the icy waters of the Arctic. Leaning back in his chair, he pushed the list slightly back toward the man. “My assets, I believe, are to be dispersed as the SSR sees fit. The item in question is genuine, I can assure you, although I have no documentation of sale to give you. It is also, perhaps, unique. There were very few like it to begin with and now? Well, there were many casualties in this war. Perhaps it is the only one remaining. It is a pity it was damaged.”

The man nodded briskly, plucking up the list and returning it to a dark leather satchel. “I will submit the list to the SSR for determination of disposition. Have you any recommendations on the handling of the item? If the interesting party is successful in their bid, they wish to ensure it is well maintained until it can be properly restored.”

“Until you have the appropriate skills to begin the restoration, it should be stored in a safe place. It seems cold temperatures would be most suitable.”

Another nod. The man stood up, meeting Arnim’s gaze directly for the first time. “No doubt it will take time to secure the expertise needed.”

“Of course.” Arnim gave him a small smile. He could hear the guard outside the door preparing to enter and take him back to his cell. Still, this turn of events was fortuitous. Whoever the man represented did not wish the SSR to know the truth, nor did they want to return the man to the SSR. His work on the serum was not wholly lost then, even if he now knew it to be a fool’s errand.

A serum to improve a man still only gave the result of a  _ man. _ Still breakable, still fallible. No, the serum was not the future, he saw that clearly now. Schmidt had been arrogant and short-sighted to put his faith in a man, even one such as himself. 

Back in his cell, Arnim sat down on the small bed they had provided him and looked up at the light fixture in the ceiling. In all of HYDRA’s dreams, in all of their visions, they had seen technology only as a crutch on which to lean in pursuit of power. But he saw it now, saw that technology was only beginning to blossom into its full potential. The future of man was not to be surrounded by blind, senseless technological creations. No, the future of man and the future of technology were one and the same.

He would see that future. Whatever banner he worked under mattered little now. SSR or HYDRA, they had both overlooked the potential of the machine to overcome the weakness of man. In his cell, he smiled at no one. He would be patient. When the time was right, the opportunity would present itself.


	2. Chapter 2

The American was a problem. Potentially valuable, but a problem nonetheless. 

Major General Kraskevich tossed the dossier onto the smooth, polished surface of the desk. It wasn’t his desk or his castle, but he could hardly be choosy. It served well enough as his center of operations while they continued to drive the German army out of the city.

With a heavy sigh, he reached for the crystal decanter and poured out a liberal serving of brandy into a matching crystal glass. He’d heard the rumors, of course. Of a German madman with inhuman powers leading a cult called HYDRA and of the equally unusual America soldier hounding him across Europe while the war raged. They’d all read the dispatches. This was not  _ that _ American soldier, but why would the Americans stop at one? If they could create such a man, he wondered what accident of Fate had kept them from sending an entire army of such soldiers across the ocean.

The American was a problem as much as his country. The same kind of problem, in fact. Young, arrogant, just now finding her own strength and drunk with it. How to solve the problem of  _ America _ was rapidly becoming a whispered question in the halls of power across the world. The world needed an answer; a response; a way to check the Americans in their aggression.

Let them celebrate for now. He picked at the corner of a newspaper. Their great soldier was lost to the Arctic, yet he had living proof in the bowels of the castle that ice and snow would not stop these soldiers, whatever they were. If Zola was to be believed; if this was the same Sergeant James Barnes from Azzano. Zola was untouchable now and his work lost in HYDRA’s funeral pyre. It would take years to recreate Zola’s work. Decades, perhaps. He might not see fruition in his lifetime. Since they’d believed the serum to be nothing more than a myth until the Americans had succeeded, their efforts had been directed toward other projects, other weapons.

Now he had a success, or at least a partial success, of his own and lacked the resources to reap any benefit of it. In addition to that frustration, the American soldier named Barnes had managed to learn enough Russian to convince his guards to play a game of poker with him. There was nothing about him to suggest that mere weeks earlier, they’d found him frozen in the snow with two shattered legs, a fractured spine and skull, and one arm torn from his body. All logic said the man should be dead.

Zola’s recommendation was storage and he was of half a mind to follow that recommendation as quickly as possible. But that would also take time and expertise he didn’t have on hand, and for what purpose could he justify the expense?

The brandy bit at his tongue. He stared out the leaded windows without truly seeing. The war was ending, any fool could see it coming, and the Americans had lost their great soldier; at least, the soldier they were willing to advertise. They would presume Barnes to be lost as well. The war would end and the cards would be dealt anew, shuffling power across the globe. If these soldiers could survive this much, not even the Arctic would hold one forever, and when the Americans found their lost weapon, there would be no other to stand against them.

He should reprimand the guards and replace them with others who weren’t as inclined to be friendly with their guest. Barnes’ gregariousness could merely be his American nature or it could be a cunning ruse. He was intelligent, certainly, and adaptable; he could be an asset. If he could be molded and shaped, perhaps  _ remade. _

A telegraph would tell him how soon the proper equipment could reach Vienna. Until then, it did no harm to let the American learn Russian and play cards with the soldiers. He would need the time to justify his requisitions. Finding the supplies locally, if they could, would shorten the delay. He couldn’t quite put his finger on why he wanted to get Barnes out of Vienna as quickly as possible, away from the Allies before they realized what they’d lost. Every war had its spoils. If he could return with a confirmed super soldier, even a damaged one, he would be rewarded.

**

It took a few tries to get the hang of reading a newspaper one-handed and the newspapers were in German, which wasn’t Bucky’s strongest language, but he could usually work out the headlines. The Germans were falling back, pushed out of Austria by the Soviets; the tide was turning. He wished he could be back out there, back in the action, that he could find the Commandos again, but it was still good to see progress in print even if he couldn’t be part of it. From the local news, he could piece together enough to know it was chaos as the Germans retreated and the Soviets settled in. He figured that was why they were holding him. They probably didn’t know what to do with half their troops, let alone one American who’d strayed from his unit.

The food was flavorless and he’d started dreaming of hot showers with real soap, but they weren’t treating him badly. The guards had a little German, a little French, some even had a little English, and the mismash had given him footholds into learning Russian. He couldn’t hold much of a conversation yet, but he thought he’d be able to find his way around in a pinch.

A loud rap at the door pulled his attention from the paper. It protested as it opened and one of the guards, Sergei, came in with yet another tray of cold porridge and bread. Bucky would complain but he knew that’s what the guards were eating as well.

“American,” Sergei said, his voice booming in the small space. “I bring food.”

Using the wall as leverage, Bucky pushed himself up to his feet, offering his thanks and asking after Sergei in fumbling, but he thought passable, Russian. It made Sergei laugh, at least, so he thought his accent must be atrocious. 

After passing the tray, Sergei held up another folded newspaper. “For you.”

Without any good options, he carefully set the tray down at the top of the blanket that served as his bed. The porridge could hardly get worse for sitting a few minutes. He reached for the paper. Another thank you. It rolled smoother off his tongue each time he tried it. Taking the opportunity, he held up the paper and asked -  _ how to say _ \- what it was called in Russian. 

“Газета,” Sergei answered, repeating the word twice more for Bucky’s benefit.

Russian felt sharp around the edges in Bucky’s mouth, so unlike the rounder vowel sounds he was used to, but he managed to get his tongue to cooperate after a few tries. At this rate, it would take him fifty years to learn the language, but it passed the time and made him feel less isolated, less like a prisoner. Neither Sergei nor the others seemed to bear him any ill will. Most of the guards were wary, but since the first day, they hadn’t held him at gunpoint. 

Sergei held up a finger. “One more, American.” He reached into one of the pockets of his vest and pulled out a roll of clean cotton bandaging. “For your arm.”

Bucky caught the roll one handed and set it aside. “What’s a man gotta do to get a chair around here? And my name’s Bucky. Told you that, didn’t I?” It was only fair, since Sergei had offered up his own name easily enough.

“кресло?” Sergei asked with a grin.

“кресло,” Bucky repeated. “Something other than the concrete to sit my ass on. кресло.”

“You learn very well, American.”

“Doing my best.” He reached for the bowl of porridge, having to sit down to settle it on his lap in order to hold the spoon. “How’s it goin’ up there?” He gestured toward the ceiling. “The war and all. You got the Germans running scared, according to the papers.”

Sergei shrugged a shoulder. “It is slow work.” There was a hint of evasiveness in his manner, his eyes not quite meeting Bucky’s for the first time since he’d entered the room.

“Who’s in charge ‘round here? You got a Command?” He kept his voice casual, kept his gaze moving between the bowl as he brought mouthfuls of porridge to his mouth and Sergei. “Any American units nearby? Might be they could come take me off your hands.”

Sergei shook his head. His gaze slid back to the door and Bucky knew he’d gotten as much as he was going to get out of him this round. He expected Sergei to leave immediately but when he didn’t hear footsteps or the sound of the door creaking open, he looked up again. Sergei was watching the door and when he turned back to face Bucky, his expression was serious. Moving quickly, he came forward to crouch in front of Bucky, eyebrows drawn down and blue eyes bright. 

“They know what you are, American. You are only one left now,” he whispered urgently. At a sound in the hallway, he froze, nervously pulling back and hurrying for the door, leaving without another word or a look back.

Bucky held still, listening to the echoes fade in the hallway and waiting for the ringing in his ears to fade away.  _ Only one left now. _ His chest was tight and what little he’d eaten sat heavily in his stomach. It would’ve been in the newspapers; it would been headline news. Wouldn’t it? The American newspapers, maybe, but this was Austria. Frantic, he navigated opening the newspaper one handed. From the date, he knew he’d been there at least three months since the operation to capture Zola and there was very little he hadn’t gleaned from earlier papers. The German army was being pushed out of Austria by the Soviets; there were a few articles about the Allied movements, but nothing stood out. Nothing indicated that he was the  _ only one left. _ What had Sergei meant? The only misplaced American soldier still being held in this place? Or something more sinister.

He’d been careful in his attempts to gain Sergei’s trust. He’d put himself with other Allied units stationed further south, away from any of the SSR’s operations. Just another soldier. His heart hammering against his ribs, he lost focus on newsprint, realizing that he’d given himself away simply by being alive. No regular human could’ve survived that fall, no matter how lucky. Of course they’d known. He’d been an idiot to think they wouldn’t. They’d kept him while they tried to figure out what to do with him and whether he was worth more to them dead or alive.

Sergei had been trying to warn him about something. Perhaps they’d made their decision. He wondered if he’d been sold to the highest bidder or if they’d finally determined what kind of laboratory would be best equipped to cut him open and dig out Zola’s secrets.

Weeks of practice in learning how to dull the shrieking panic in his mind kept his hand steady as he carefully folded up the newspaper and set it aside. He finished the bowl of porridge, his attention on every minute sound that filtered in through the heavy door. Whatever their intentions were, he couldn’t act until he was released from the cell and, until then, all he could do was keep his mind and body as intact as possible. This was another battlefield, not a firefight but battle all the same. He had to keep a cool head and stay focused. Whatever their decision, they would have to move him and he would be ready.

Having eaten, he settled into his usual routine, if it could be called a routine. He’d mastered one armed pushups and did those until his arm shook, then switched to sit-ups, moving down the muscle groups until his whole body was shaking with the effort. Sitting back down on the blanket, he sorted through the small stack of newspapers and reread the articles, parsing out the German as best he could and trying to decipher the unknown words. When his head was aching from trying to master another language, he recited poems and hymns and prayers, and he thought of home, of the first thing he planned to do once he got back to New York City. Planned out to the smallest detail; he could almost smell the city as he imagined stepping off the boat for the last time.

Home.

Carefully, he wrapped up those images and memories and tucked them into the back of his mind. The very first day he’d woken up in this cell, he could remember the men coming in with guns and he could remember the look on the leader’s face. The shrewd, calculating look of a man who’d stumbled onto something he thought he could use or sell to the highest bidder. That look made his skin crawl now.

With his back against the wall, he took stock of the contents of the cell. He’d done it a thousand times, but didn’t have anything else to fill the time. Nothing had changed. A tray with a bowl, spoon, and tin cup. One blanket, what was left of his old uniform, and a pile of newspapers he could barely read. He’d spent hours inspecting the hinges on the iron door with no results and the opening was too narrow to slip through. His windows of opportunity came only when someone outside opened the door. They’d gotten used to him enough that they no longer sent several armed men to deliver his food, only Sergei. But Sergei was spooked. How much could he push the fragile camaraderie he’d nurtured? He didn’t know the layout of the building so a few seconds wouldn’t cut it and an escape attempt would either get him shot or shackled. Or worse.

Gooseflesh rose on his arm and the back of his neck, making him shiver. There was no Zola here; Zola was captured and long gone. He shut his eyes against the ghost sensations of straps over his chest and legs and Zola’s insane mumbling as he inserted needle after needle, twisting them into his veins. Phantom pain from his lost left arm throbbed.

“Keep it together, soldier,” he whispered. He counted his breaths, in and out, like he’d learned to do after Azzano. It helped every time he wanted to puke his guts out, at least. One, two, three, four; in and out. “Keep it together and you’ll get home. You’re going home, Barnes. Just gotta keep your head.”

He wanted a drink and a pile of hotdogs three feet tall. He wanted Coney Island and to sleep in his own bed instead of a blanket on stone. Homesickness crouched heavy and ugly in his chest, aching with a ferocity that didn’t care about how many breaths he counted. Pulling his legs up tight to his chest, he pressed his forehead to his knees and kept counting. 

“Keep it together,” he repeated, spinning the words into a mantra until they blurred together and stopped making sense. One sound after another; one breath after another. “Keep it together, keep it together.”

He  _ would _ go home again.

**

The last weld glowed bright under the torch, giving off heat even after it began to cool. Once secured to the support brackets, the chamber itself was dwarfed by the beams that would anchor it to the bed of a train car. It was primitive but it would do. 

Kraskevich surveyed the last of the work with patience born of imminent success. This would join the shipment scheduled to leave Vienna that night and the train would reach Moscow by morning. The rest would take more time and more preparation, but once the temperature in the chamber was stabilized, they would have as much time as they needed to make the appropriate diplomatic overtures and secure resources. One extremely promising proposal had already surfaced, drawing heavily from Arnim Zola’s philosophical writings of merging man with machine. There would be challenges, of course, even setbacks, but he knew this particular asset to be highly resilient. It was worth the risk.

Movement in the corridor caught his attention but he kept his gaze firmly toward the work on the chamber. Two of his men stood guard at the corridor, casting furtive looks at both him and the chamber. Perhaps the spoils of war didn’t seem as attractive when they lived and breathed. He’d allowed them to get to know the American as an experiment and to learn more about the man, though he’d given them nothing they hadn’t already known. The American was clever and cautious; perhaps precautions needed to be taken.

Coffee was brought down from the upper quarters. It took the edge off of the chill that seemed to emanate from the walls around him. He disliked being underground, surrounded by stone and tons of earth above him, but some things were better tucked away from prying eyes. It wouldn’t do for the Allies to get even a whisper of what he’d salvaged from the mountain pass.

The coffee was long gone by the time the work on the chamber anchors was complete. Heavy casters creaked against the stone floor but it still moved and the east corridor was wide enough for a half dozen men to muscle the whole unit through to one of the lower access doors. And if they had to remove a wall or two, it didn’t matter to him; it wasn’t his castle. The tanks of liquid coolant were bring brought in now and once the fittings were attached to the chamber, it would be ready. For such a short order, it was an ingenious design. Improvements could be made for longer term storage once the cargo reached Moscow.

One of his men brought him a pile of communications to review while he waited. He could hardly neglect managing his troops and the reclamation of Vienna for a single asset. Protests had been raised about the installation of a governing Council and he needed to respond to General von Bünau about continued defensive fortifications without raising the general’s curiosity about any unusual supply requisitions. The telegraphs and forms occupied his attention until he heard the men preparing to fetch their American guest. They had no scientists with them, but he was confident in the prepared instructions from the architect of the chamber. Still, he finished writing his final letter before looking up. 

Three men had brought the America from his cell. The youngest of them, a mere Lieutenant, was standing close to the man’s side. From the furtive looks between the chamber and himself, Kraskevich could see doubt and fear of what the American’s future held. It was always a risk, letting soldiers and prisoners mix,  and this one was brimming with the misguided optimism of youth. Unfortunate, but perhaps he could still be useful as a lesson, both for the American and the others. With a sigh, he checked his service revolver before setting aside the communications and starting down the stairs.

“лейтена́нт,” he barked, motioning for the other men to step away. He was unsurprised when the Lieutenant moved a step forward and in front of the American.  The young man - Kraskevich vaguely thought his name might have been Sergei - was nervous but unafraid. His eyes widened only when Kraskevich tugged his revolver from his belt and pointed it at the smooth, pale skin of the Lieutenant’s forehead. 

The American flinched sharply when the revolver fired, the report painfully loud against the stone walls of the chamber. Blood sprayed out against the left side of his face and body before the Lieutenant crumpled, lifeless, to the floor.

“What the hell?” The American shouted, staring down at the blood dripping from his own left hand.

“You will have no friends where you are going, Sergeant Barnes. You would do well to remember that.” Kraskevich holstered his weapon and nodded to the men standing by, giving the order to place the American in the chamber.

“Why,” he choked out, trying to jerk free of the men’s grip before one of them put the barrel of his rifle against the American’s throat. “You didn’t...you didn’t need to, he wasn’t. He didn’t do anything!” His protestation was cut short when the men began to push and drag him toward the chamber. It took only a moment for him to realize what they were doing and he began to struggle in earnest.

It took six men, in the end, and Kraskevich had no doubt it would’ve taken more if the American had retained both of his arms and had been well rested and well fed. He watched with detached interest as they closed the chamber and secured the lid with heavy bolts. The valves squeaked as they turned, hissing coolant through the pipes. He could watch frost form and spread over the surface of the chamber. From within, he heard the thud of a fist against the metal. Once, twice, three times. He saw the frost begin to cover the small window in the lid and the contents of the chamber went silent, frozen by the unforgiving cold filling the chamber walls.

He felt relief once it was done. This part, at least, had succeeded. Carefully, he stepped through pooling blood to crouch beside the Lieutenant's body, reaching down to close the man’s pale, sightless eyes. He would ensure the Lieutenant’s family received compensation for their loss and a soldier’s burial for their son. This was the first blood spilt in their effort to create a weapon to match the Americans, but he knew in his bones that it would not be the last.

**

Fog rolled back and Bucky drifted, detached, through it toward light and sound. He registered a heartbeat and thought it must be his own, even if he couldn’t remember what it should sound or feel like. Gradually, voices wound their way through the fog. There was a tug at his left arm. Thinking it was the crow picking at his damaged flesh, he tried to raise his right hand to chase it away, but his body didn’t respond. He felt heavy, but floating at the same time, unable to feel where his skin ended and his surroundings began.

Another tug.

With an effort, he managed to turn his head a fraction of an inch and open his eyes. There was no crow and no packed snow beneath him. He saw bare skin down to the stump where his bone had shattered on impact and fresh blood sprayed out from a spinning metal blade. A  _ saw, _ his frozen brain finally supplied, and a saw meant someone was using it. Crowded memories of medics and triage tents flashed behind his eyes.

“The procedure is already started,” said a voice. Was that a memory too? He knew that voice but couldn’t pull a face from his memory. There was a train and a river like a razor cut through ice and snow.

The fog returned and pulled him with it, leaving him floating through empty space with only the vaguest awareness of what was going on around him. He could feel pressure on his face around his mouth and nose but his hand remained sullenly unresponsive, unable to reach for whatever it was. The air smelled metallic and when he tried to take a deep breath, even his lungs seemed to be beyond his control.

When the light returned the second time, the sounds were sharper and he could feel tremors in his limbs. Fog still edged his vision but he could see blurry outlines of equipment and men working around him. It was in his ears too, stuffed like cotton and dampening the sounds. There was fresh pain like needles in his left shoulder and a strange, new weight anchoring him to the solid surface against his back. He remembered sleeping on a stone floor; a man bringing him food. The smell of blood and the feel of it hot and thick on his skin jolted him closer to awake. There was a name he couldn’t quite pull loose from the fog; the name of the man who had died for nothing. He tried to raise his hand again, to feel for the blood spattered over his face, and a second hand rose in tandem with his right. It had four fingers and thumb but it didn’t look like a human hand; it looked like metal, reminding him of Howard’s wildest daydreams of automatons. 

His whole being fixated on the metal hand. Lights gleamed on its surface and it responded as he turned his wrist and clenched the fingers into a fist. One of the men around him came near.

_ You will have no friends where you are going, Sergeant Barnes. _

He registered  _ enemy. _ He reached for the man nearest him and the man was either too busy inspecting the arm to realize the danger or he was merely foolish, but Bucky wrapped his alien hand around the man’s throat.

“You are to be the new fist of HYDRA,” said the voice. He could remember a face now. Pale face, thinning hair; he remembered pain.

The man’s windpipe collapsed under the metal fingers as a needle sunk into his thigh. It didn’t hurt, but the fog immediately began to circle around him and he knew they’d done something, put something in his blood to make him still again.

“Put him on ice.”

Impossible cold and a dark chamber like a coffin. They’d dragged him. He could feel the press of a gun barrel against the side of his neck and taste blood. Unable to struggle this time, he could barely keep his eyes open as they muscled him into the chamber. There were faint marks on the inside of the lid, as though someone had tried to scratch or claw their way out. The strap went over his chest to keep him in place and he remembered; it had been him, fighting against the creeping cold. 

He couldn’t move this time, couldn’t even scream as the lid closed and shut out the light. The cold was already biting at him, soaking into his very bones. Frost formed and spread over his skin. He raised a hand, the metal one, to the narrow window, but it was too late. 

The fog took him away.


	3. Chapter 3

Waking came with rolling waves of pain through his limbs, seeming to coil tight in his abdomen only to roll out again. He had a vague awareness of direction, of lying on his back. The pain morphed into shivers, muscles clenching and releasing like they were sloughing off the weight of the cold. His skin turned gooseflesh. Suddenly, he realized that he wasn’t breathing and his lungs burned before his body remembered how to inhale. Air felt hot in his mouth and throat and he gasped for more, trying to draw the heat out of the air into his freezing body.

Every cell in his body focused on finding warmth. His heart beat like a misfiring motor engine and the shivers advanced to seizures that twisted him over onto his left side, knees jerking up toward his chest. Gradually, the shaking eased enough to plant his right hand against the floor beneath him. More stone. That didn’t bode well. He knew it would be another prison cell before he was warm enough to slit open his eyes.

It was about the same size as his previous cell, narrow and with the bare minimum plumbing so they didn’t have to let him out if they didn’t want to, but this time there was a wall of bars instead of a solid door. They didn’t intend to give him any privacy this time around. A prison  _ and _ a zoo then. The bed was narrow and it took him a second to realize why it looked strange; it had wheels and there bars running along the sides that made no sense unless they were intended to anchor straps that held the person in the bed down. No wonder he was on the floor; that bed made the hair on the back of neck stand up. If they’d brought him in on the bed, he must’ve rolled out of it on instinct alone. Beside the bed was a small table with a lamp plugged into the wall. In another world, it might’ve been a homey touch, but here, it was surreal and ghoulish.

He pushed himself up and the scrape of metal against stone brought his attention sharply to his left arm. Except it wasn’t his arm. It wasn’t even an arm; it was a machine. But it responded as though it was his arm, raising and lowering and each of the fingers moved, stiffly and slowly, when he focused on them. A dull ache burned in his shoulder and the weight of it caught him off guard when he tried to stand, forcing him to slump back down. Resting his left hand against his thigh, he drew his right fingertips over the grooves in the metal, feeling each ridge and the perfect smoothness of the plates. The feel of the metal tugged at a dim memory; a strange familiarity.

There was a hum too, almost too quiet to hear, and the plates made a soft whirring as the gears underneath shifted. It didn’t seem real. A part of him thought of Howard’s tools and inventions, wondering what he’d think of this. As he imagined Howard’s reaction, he remembered using the arm to crush a man’s windpipe. It must’ve been when they attached it. He had to crane his neck to see the edges where they met skin. Even as cold as he was, the skin was an angry red and inflamed. It felt swollen when he reached up to feel around the edges of the plates. There was metal underneath his skin in places, anchoring the arm deep inside his body. They’d had to cut into him to do this, either they’d peeled back the skin or his body had tried to heal around it.

Hunching in on himself, he tried not to think about the saw they’d used to cut into his arm. And whatever else they’d done. Swallowing down the taste of bile, he inspected the rest of his body in case there were more metal parts they’d added. Why give him a metal arm? It didn’t make sense to make the effort to graft a machine onto him if they intended to kill him. That made him an experiment, at best, perhaps only to see if it could be done without killing the subject. 

Not just an experiment, he thought as he watched the plates in what had been his forearm move. The arm was a weapon. It couldn’t be meant for anything else. And if they thought he was going to turn and use it against his friends and allies, to be  _ their _ weapon, they were in for disappointment. He had no idea where he was, no hope of a rescue; they threw him into cold storage whenever they wanted and they’d grafted a machine’s arm onto his body; all of which meant he had nothing to lose except his own life. His throat tightened. He didn’t want to die but he’d seen enough of the war to know there were worse things than death and, if he was right about what they meant for him, this could definitely be worse.

He sat on the floor until his muscles began to protest and reluctantly made his way to the bed, grateful down to his bones to settle on something softer than stone, even if it was only marginally less solid. His mind slipped away into daydreams of goose down pillows. 

The ugly sound of boots on stone snapped him out of those pleasant thoughts. He forced himself not to respond, staying seated on the bed as he waited for his new jailer to arrive. There was no point trying to talk to this one, not after what had happened before. Surely the word had spread; get too cozy with the American prisoner and end up like Sergei. It was a solid tactic, even he had to admit that, as disgusted as he was with himself that he could understand it. Another way to isolate him.

More guards with faces that Bucky deliberately didn’t try to remember. The uniforms were black this time and heavier, meant for the cold. They didn’t speak. They barely looked at him as they opened the gate and delivered his rations. More tasteless gruel and salted meat. He was surprised by the small stack of books, but kept his expression neutral, staring at a spot on the wall instead of watching them. Once they were gone, he reached for the books first. Worn and scuffed at the corners, they weren’t in English and the letters printed on the pages were only passingly familiar as Cyrillic. At the bottom of the stack, he found a translation dictionary; Russian to English.

Incredulous, he held the books on his lap. If they expected him to learn Russian on his own, these couldn’t help him make the right sounds when he opened his mouth. Unless they intended to give him all information in written form, the books were next to useless in any practical sense. Setting them aside, he ate the porridge and chewed on the salted meat. Whatever their agenda was, he wished they’d just tell him and get it over with.

Without a way to tell time, he didn’t know if he lasted twenty minutes or two minutes after he finished eating before he reached for the dictionary and the top book. It was better than sitting there listening to his own heartbeat echoing off the walls and his steadily rising paranoia like a ticking clock.

Progress was slow but he forced himself to focus not only on translating the words, but piecing out the sentence structures and looking for nuances in the language itself. Language was more than verbs and nouns strung together; language was architecture, built with intent. He needed to understand that intent as well as the words to truly understand the language. The thinnest book gradually revealed itself to be a collection of fables, perhaps meant to teach children social or cultural lessons. They seemed odd to him, slightly morbid compared to more familiar fairy tales.

Hours must have passed when he heard boots approaching again. More guards, another tray of food. This time a man in a long gray overcoat and a black satchel came with him. He barked orders in Russian, gesturing as he set the bag on the bed and opened it, revealing basic medical equipment.

“I don’t understand you,” Bucky said, but he thought the man was telling him to turn to his left side. 

He must’ve been right because the man immediately began to prod at the inflamed skin around the metal grafts. Bucky winced but shut his mouth tightly, not wanting to give any signs of pain or weakness. They might not have any reasons to hurt him and he didn’t intend to give them one. Once the man was satisfied with his inspection, he forcefully moved Bucky through a sequence of exercises that engaged all of the intricate plates in the metal arm; he took notes in a thin red notebook as Bucky went through the motions and made small marks on a handful of the plates with a black china marker. 

Assuming the man was a doctor of some kind, Bucky didn’t put up a fight when he moved from the arm to check Bucky’s pulse and temperature, fingers cold against Bucky’s skin. He flashed a small light across Bucky’s vision and took more notes before packing up his bag. Whatever he said to the guards as they let him out of the cell was lost to Bucky. He waited for the last echo of footsteps to fade before reaching for the dinner tray.

They wanted him alive and they wanted him healthy. At least relatively healthy. He stared at the books without really seeing them while he swallowed more of the lukewarm porridge. Perhaps they were merely trying to gauge how well his body was adjusting to the prosthetic arm. For all he knew, his shoulder would turn necrotic in a few days and it would leach into his blood, killing him painfully within weeks. He’d seen it happen to some of the men and the surrounding flesh certainly looked infected. Hell of a way to die, being a science experiment. He felt gingerly around the edges of the metal. Would the chemicals Zola had given him be enough to keep the arm from killing him? He hadn’t pushed his limits, hadn’t tried to find the places and ways Zola made him different from how he’d been before; he hadn’t wanted to know.

A mouthful of porridge stuck like cement in his throat. He tried not to think of the newspaper Sergei had given him and what it might have meant. For all he knew, he’d been frozen for months since then, maybe even years, and the war was long over. Phillips would’ve sent a letter to his parents. They wouldn’t have a body to bury but they wouldn’t be the only family staring down an empty grave. With a bitter sense of desolation, he hoped they wouldn’t waste any money on it. Maybe they’d get a medal and it’d be passed down to Rebecca and then to her children; none of them ever knowing what really happened to him.

The idea squatted like an ugly, malicious creature inside his brain. Lost, forgotten; he’d be reduced to a Russian experiment and put away in a frozen coffin until they found a terrible use for him. 

Looking for a distraction, he retreated into puzzling out Cyrillic characters in the books and taking absent minded bites of food. He got up to get more water from the tiny metal sink and to relieve himself, glancing over his shoulder out of ingrained habit more than anything; if the guards wanted to watch him piss that was their problem, but no one was there.

He managed to work his way through the first small book before fatigue crept up on him. The books went under the bed in a carefully stacked pile and he left the tray with the empty bowl near the wall of bars. On the bed, he rolled to put his back toward the stone wall and curled his limbs in to retain as much body heat as possible. The metal arm was uncomfortable and heavy, making it nearly impossible to find a truly comfortable position. He drifted in and out of a restless sleep, waking up enough to shift against an oncoming muscle cramp or scratch at the itching flesh around his metal shoulder. The lights in the hall and his cell were dim but never turned off, forcing him to press his face against the bed, trying to block out the light.

A sour smell and burning pain in his left side woke him once. Groggily, he pushed himself to a sitting position. His shirt stuck wetly to his chest. He picked at it, confused, until he realized that fluid had seeped through the fabric. It made a sloppy, sick sound as he pulled it away from his skin and up over his head. Blood tinged pus was oozing around the edges of the metal plates embedded in his shoulder. He could see tracks from his own fingers where he’d tried to reach the itching under his skin, probably opening up the pockets of pus as he scratched. Even with the pain, the urge to scratch at the inflamed skin was overwhelming.

He had enough presence of mind to haul his aching body off the bed to the sink and wash the pus off his skin as well as he could with handfuls of water. Maybe they’d let him succumb to infection and use the arm on someone else. Hoping that Zola’s experiments would keep him alive felt like hoping for more pain and suffering instead of a quick, painless death.

Shivering brought a fresh wave of pain in his shoulder, like the stabbing of thousands of needles. Hot tingling and itching around the wound came after the pain. He had to grip the side of the sink to keep from clawing at his skin and doing more damage. He swayed on his feet, either due to the weight of the arm or dizziness from standing. There was sweat on his forehead and he could feel it beading along his hairline at the back of his neck. Definitely infected, then. It felt like the beginning of a fever. Or maybe his body was simply rejecting the abomination they’d grafted onto it.

This wasn’t how he’d wanted to die.

He forced himself to wash as much of the wound as he could reach one more time; the cold water eased the burning pain and itching for a few seconds. Short of calling for help, it was all he could do. Considering they were the ones who’d put the damn arm on him in the first place, he thought he’d rather die in his cell than ask them for help. Not that he believed they’d help him out of the goodness of their hearts, he’d abandoned that hope when the bastard shot Sergei over a few newspapers. They might decide to treat him, even save him, if they had to, but it wouldn’t be  _ help; _ just protecting their investment.

Slumping back onto the thin mattress, he tried to get comfortable as he felt increasingly sick. He was dripping with sweat but shivering and the itching under his skin grew unbearable. Sleep came in fevered bursts, broken up by either pain or itching. He woke up scratching at the ceaseless itching, feeling his fingers slipping over skin wet with sweat and blood where he’d dug into the inflamed flesh and scraped away red, broken skin. Even then, even with the stinging pain, he couldn’t stop the desperate impulse to scratch.

Once, he woke up to find the doctor standing over him, checking his shoulder none too gently. He ground his molars together, determined not to say anything even if he wanted to beg them to make it stop. With the fever and the infection in his shoulder, he didn’t even register the needles as the doctor injected vial after vial into his right arm. Poison or medicine, he didn’t care if it let him sleep. Or die.

The next time he was awake enough to recognize the doctor, his vision was blurry and he could smell vomit. Guards held him down to keep him steady enough for the doctor to give him more injections, then they dragged him to his feet and hauled him out of the cell. His neck couldn’t support the weight of his head and no matter how he tried, he couldn’t get his feet under him to take a step on his own. At the end of a hallway, they carried him into another cold, damp room and let him drop to the floor. Metal clanged and scraped against the stone, the weight of the arm dragging him to the left and keeping him down as surely as if they’d chained him. Icy water hit his back, biting into his skin like thousands of tiny knives. He gasped, feebly raising his right arm in an attempt to shield himself from the spray. They were hosing him off, he realized, like an animal that had rolled in something foul. His stomach turned and he heaved a mouthful of bile out onto the floor.

His teeth chattered too much to protest or beg or say anything at all. He was helpless as they sprayed him down. When the water stopped, they manhandled him out of his soiled clothes and into a clean, black uniform similar to what the guards wore. Not a lot of prisoners then, if this was all they had to give him. 

“Bastards,” he hissed through clenched teeth as they hauled him up again, taking him back to his cell. “Hope you’re stuck wiping my ass for the rest of my miserable life.” They didn’t respond; he figured they spoke less English than he spoke Russian.

New goal; learn how to cuss in Russian.

Before they dropped him onto the bed in his cell, he had time to register that they’d replaced the mattress stained with his blood, pus, and vomit, with an identically uncomfortable but clean mattress. There was a tray on the small table with something that looked like soup. It seemed incongruously merciful. If capturing someone, giving them a mechanical arm, waiting to see if the arm killed them, and deciding to give them soup could ever qualify as mercy. 

He forced himself to stay awake long enough to try the soup, which turned out to be some kind of broth. The fever had probably sweated out enough fluid to make the risk of dehydration his primary concern, other than the infection trying to kill him. With effort, he managed to wedge himself into the corner so he could keep the bowl within reach and lean all his weight against the wall. He measured the time between drifting off into sleep and waking up by the temperature of the soup; it was stone cold by the time he swallowed down the last mouthful. But his fever had broken, he was certain of it. The worst might be over.

One temple and cheek against the cool stone of the wall, he finally slipped into a deep, dreamless sleep that lasted until more guards woke him. They’d brought the doctor and another tray of soup and bread. There were no more injections this time and less pain as the doctor prodded the flesh around the metal arm. He didn’t resist - there was no point - and got the soup down before it went cold. With his stomach full and not trying to empty itself, he laid out on the bed after they’d left and closed his eyes. He’d learned one thing in the ordeal, they were willing to do what needs must to keep him alive, but that thought seemed more terrifying than comforting. How far were they willing to go? And how much suffering would he have to endure because they wanted to keep him alive? They held all the cards; food, water, basic human needs.

There would be a price to pay; there was always a price. He didn’t think he’d ever be ready to know what it was.

**

They left him in relative peace as his infection faded. Alone with his books. It might have been two weeks. He couldn’t be certain. He suspected they were bringing him more than three meals a day, heavy on the protein, and despite not having seen a single vegetable in his recent memory, he felt healthy. He’d even put on weight again, filling out the uniform more comfortably. 

These guards never said much to him and the doctor spoke only Russian. After spending more time with the books and translation guide, he thought he might be picking up common words. He tried them out, under his breath, as he pieced his way through a book of fables. If they were waiting for him to learn Russian, they were going to be waiting for a long time, but other than inspecting his arm and feeding him, they didn’t seem interested in him at all. Maybe Howard’s experiments were left on the shelf while he worked on other projects and then grew bored, waiting. Comparing himself to one of Howard’s inventions was probably a sign that his sanity was in question. Not that insanity was a poor choice when he was a forgotten prisoner; the whole world thought he was dead and anyone who could’ve saved him, who would’ve cared enough to save him, was also dead. Probably. 

He kept his bitter monologue to himself, conscious of the open bars and the fact that anyone could see him. It was possible that his isolation was only an illusion, that they pretended to leave him alone. If they were invested enough in their science project to keep him alive, he figured they were also invested enough to covertly keep him under surveillance. They seemed the kind to play twisted mind games; they’d murdered Sergei and brought him children’s books.

Still, there were days he thought of nothing but home. Until he ached with how much he missed it and how desperately he hated the bowls of porridge and strips of salted meat. Other days, he forced himself not to think of it at all. What was the point? He wasn’t stupid enough to believe they’d ever let him out for good behavior. He’d die here, one way or another, and even that probably wouldn’t be up to him. 

Boots sounded against the stone. He thought it was early for lunch. Or dinner, he’d stopped trying to keep track. The usual three armed guards were outside his cell, one of them working a key in the lock.

“Soldat,” the man said, gesturing for Bucky to stand up and follow them.

It was close enough to  _ soldier _ that he was confident in his guess. Leaving his book behind on the table, he cautiously moved to the gate and stepped out. With two guns pointed at him as he walked, there was no illusion that he was any less a captive for being out of his cage. Maybe there were other prisoners and they thought he was ready to meet them, or maybe the doctor didn’t feel like coming down into the dungeons that day. He tried to covertly look for signs and doors, anything that might help him navigate or lead to a way out. There were no windows, only endless concrete and steel and bare bulbs lighting the corridor. The damp and the cold made him think they were deep underground and his hunch seemed confirmed when they led him into a wide, shuddering elevator that must’ve been meant for equipment rather than people.

He swallowed down a joke about all the beach prisons being full. They probably wouldn’t appreciate the joke and it would just be gibberish sounds to them anyway. From the little book of fables he’d managed to translate, he didn’t think he understood the Russian sense of humor.

They led him out of the elevator into a wide, circular room with bare concrete walls. There were small, rectangular windows embedded in some sections and he thought he saw people moving through the glass. The doctor was there, seated calmly and incongruously at a small table with a red notebook open in front of him. He glanced up once, not even pausing as he wrote, and barked out a command to the guards, who prodded him forward into the middle of the room.

Hair on the back of Bucky’s neck was standing on end now, skin crawling with a sick anticipation. The way the doctor was sitting, taking notes, as if he was there to observe something. It was cold and impartial; Bucky was just an experiment. 

A sound behind him alerted him to the guards’ movements and he realized, dread paralyzing him, that they’d formed a loose circle around him. The guns were out of sight, swapped out for heavy black batons. He swallowed, trying to watch them and look for a way out at the same time. There were stairs, in the back, and he thought he could hear distant voices. At the table, the doctor began to speak, his voice perfectly calm.

“What?” Bucky demanded, not daring to look at the doctor. “I don’t speak Russian. Whatever you want me to do, I don’t understand.”

He tried to take a step back from one of the guards, but that only brought him closer to another. They watched him impassively, waiting for something. The doctor paused for a few seconds, then began again, repeating what he’d said before. The words were no less a jumble of vowels and consonants than they’d been the first time, but the repetition was the signal the guards were waiting for. 

The first baton clanged against his metal arm, vibrating painfully through his shoulder. That had been instinct more than thought. He dodged a swipe at his head but the third guard connected solidly at the middle of his back, hitting with the pain and tingling nerves of a bolt of lightning. Stunned, he only managed to bring his arms up to shield his chest and duck his head before one of them slammed a baton into the side of his right knee. 

He was conscious of sharp bursts of pain and the taste of blood in his mouth. Even after he was on the ground, they kept going. Blow after blow until all that was left was the pain and shock. He was too far gone to feel the blow to the back of his head that knocked him out.

Consciousness returned in bits and flashes.

He heard the doctor’s voice droning on. The same words repeating over and over. There was blood in his mouth and both eyes were swollen shut. He thought he felt a few loose teeth when he managed to swallow. 

A needle stung as it sunk into his right arm. He couldn’t resist or pull away. It felt as though his ribs were knitting themselves back together. His right knee was on fire.

For a long time, he laid still, cataloging the various different types of pain like a collection of ugly butterflies. Bright and sharp; hot and burning; the low, dull ache of mending bone. There were phantom pains from his left arm despite metal not being able to feel pain. Healing nerves were like millions of biting ants under his skin, punctuated by lancing, stabbing pain like the blade of a knife.

It wasn’t fair. None of this. 

Falling from the train, being found by someone who probably sold him to the highest bidder, and then being brought here to be used as some sort of lab rat. At least, that was the only explanation he could think of. Beat him up and see how quickly he healed; see how well Zola’s experiments had succeeded. His blood and bruises were being documented, measured, for science and whatever other end they had in mind. Would he heal quickly enough for them to find him useful? Or would they learn all they could from him before disposing of him?

It wasn’t fair. Not that he’d ever counted on life being fair, but it felt important as he drifted between waking and sleeping, to hold onto the idea that it wasn’t fair; that he hadn’t done anything to  _ deserve _ this. He’d been captured and he’d fallen and none of that was his fault. If they wanted  _ him, _ they’d have to come in and dig him out the hard way. He wasn’t going to do their job for them by dismantling himself from the inside. 

Instead, he counted his breaths and he took methodical mental notes on all his injuries, on all the needles they stuck in his arm or legs or throat. He paid attention to which tendons pulled tight and sore when they hoisted him off the cot in his cell and dragged him out to be hosed down on the concrete floor. Blood and bits of dead skin, scabbed over and ugly, washed away from him and he didn’t think much about it. He thought about whether or not his knee burned less this time than it had the last, since that was his only measure of time outside the food they brought him. None of it seemed to bother them any; he didn’t think he was a person to them. An animal, maybe, or just an experiment. Something to poke and prod and see how it reacted.

He dreamed fantastical things. He dreamed of claws sprouting from his fingers and long, sharp teeth in his mouth. Of weapons and power they couldn’t take away from him, and of ways he could escape. He dreamed of finding a door left open, forgotten, and running until his lungs burned. He dreamed of being saved and rescued and carried back to New York where he could stare out a window overlooking a flower garden, like the damaged hero from a novel. A cup of tea; a blanket over his knees; a nurse who smiled kindly when she saw him. Emptiness where the weight of his left arm was now, completely free of the men who had him and what they’d grafted onto his body.

In the dreams, he could almost smell the roses. Almost.

His body healed and he found himself unsurprised when the guards arrived to lead him back up to the circular room. Unsurprised to see the doctor with his red notebook, calm and unperturbed by what was about to happen.

He learned to fight back, learned to watch and mimic the men attacking him. Learned the limits of the metal arm they’d given him. And once he’d successfully defended himself against three armed men, they added three more. Each time, the doctor repeated the same string of words. Words that made Bucky’s hair stand on end and his skin crawl, just thinking of them. The doctor’s voice seemed to sink into him like a hook, digging deeper the harder he tried to pull away. He didn’t know what any of the words meant but he didn’t think it mattered. The words themselves weren’t important.

“Gotovy soblyudat?” They asked him, each time. He didn’t know what that meant either.

It was a stupid way to train someone to fight, he thought once, through the haze of his injuries. But he supposed that wasn’t all they were trying to train him to be in this cold, dark hell he’d fallen into.

They didn’t seem interested in starving him, though he wondered more than once if there were drugs in his food. It was practical. Starving him would affect his healing rate and skew their data. Maybe they’d get around to those tests after they’d answered their initial questions. How long he could go without food, how long he could go without sleep. He’d wondered the same things after Azzano, when he realized he was hungry more than usual, but slept hardly at all. Battle fatigue, he’d thought, in his most private thoughts.

He didn’t think they had a word for what would be wrong with him if he was ever rescued. Whatever was left of him. Maybe they’d find a skeleton with a metal arm. Maybe they’d remove the arm and give it to someone else when they were done, not wanting to waste all that work on a dead body. He daydreamed, sometimes, about leaving a message inside the arm for whatever damned soul got to carry it next, but even in the dreams, his message turned into the same string of words that meant pain would follow. Whoever got the arm next probably wouldn’t need him to tell him, they’d already know the words.

Between beatings, or training sessions, however they saw them, he kept studying the Russian books. He could read most of them cover to cover without having to check the translation dictionary now and bits of the guards conversations were starting to make sense. Rusty gears began to turn inside his mind, parts of his brain that hadn’t been used since he learned his first words beginning to fire up again. He heard snippets of complaining about the cold and the rations, familiar complaints that reminded him of the Front and his own men. It was getting harder to remember their faces. Without his tags, he wasn’t certain of his own name all the time. Here, it didn’t seem to matter. His only constant friend in this place was pain. One of the lights in the corridor outside his cell buzzed a bit, so maybe that counted as a friend. It wasn’t much for conversation though. At least the pain talked to him in twinges and jolts and a dull murmur in his joints.

As his cobbled together Russian got more proficient, he picked up enough snippets of conversation to know they - whoever  _ they _ were - weren’t displeased with how well he was taking his beatings, not displeased enough to scratch him off the list and start over. But there was something he was doing wrong, or not doing at all, that they still wanted to happen. They weren’t bothering to tell him what was, only waiting for him to fumble his way through the pain and violence to figure it out on his own. He thought they might be overestimating his ability to think clearly after they’d pummeled him into a pile of contusions.

Most of the guards already thought he wasn’t very bright, not seeming to speak or understand a word of Russian, but he didn’t particularly care what they thought of him. The opinions of monsters, and those complicit with monsters, meant very little. 

The first time they didn’t beat him unconscious, he thought they must’ve gotten tired, but they wrestled a heavy pack onto his shoulders and shoved him through another corridor to another elevator. At the top, his face met air so cold it formed instant, bloody ice inside his nose and throat. He choked, stumbling away from the baton pressed to his back. It was so absurd that he didn’t believe it at first. He was surrounded by six guards fully dressed in winter gear complete with fur hats and they were making him march over rocky, frost covered ground.

His numb brain processed mountains, their peaks barren above the dark tree line and still capped with snow that probably never melted even in the height of summer. They were on a raised area, possibly a plateau, with a sheer cliff to one side and a wide, sweeping valley to the other. Vaguely, he knew they were marching him in a circle but it wasn’t long before all his focus was on planting one foot in front of another and moving fast enough that none of the guards felt compelled to hit him with a baton. At least they had to march too, if only to keep him from running. From the permeating silence, he didn’t think there was anything to run toward, but the idea stuck with him.

In half glances between steps, he scanned bits of the surroundings, looking for signs of wildlife, even a tree or a stream. Anything that wasn’t cold grey stone or ice. He looked up a handful of times, searching for birds and seeing nothing but endless blue sky. 

Once they returned, he buckled and collapsed under the weight of the pack on the way down the elevator. They dragged him back to his cell and tossed him onto the bed where he could cough up blood in relative peace and quiet. The light buzzed softly in the hall. He felt for the books he kept on the floor beside the bed, curling his fingers over the worn edges. Small comforts; stories of places that weren’t  _ here. _

One of the fables in his book was a boy trapped behind a wall. He understood the mechanics of the story and that it was supposed to be a cautionary tale about obeying your parents, but the image of a small boy behind a wall of mismatched stones, oblivious to the chaos he’d caused outside, stuck with him. Each time he was laid up on his bed, rousing only to eat or get prodded by the doctor, he imagined building a wall that none of the guards or crazy doctors could climb or break down. It felt like they kept handing him bricks to build it, with every cut and bruise and loose tooth. It also felt like a delusion brought on by his crumbling sanity, for all anyone cared about his sanity.

He got used to cataloguing the pains that came with marching too. The ache in his muscles from walking and climbing; the burn in his arms, back, and shoulders from lifting and carrying whatever they forced into his hands. They seemed determined to grind him down so far into exhaustion and pain that he’d never escape, as if the bars, concrete, and the barren wasteland above weren’t enough of a prison. There was still something else they wanted from him. Whatever it was, he couldn’t read their minds and wasn’t going to waste his time trying. He doubted even Zola had managed that feat. The more they threw at him, the more it felt like they were training him for something. Another mystery. They fed him well and kept him well-exercised, even if it felt like endless rounds in a boxing ring with a brick wall. 

Each time he laid on the bed, holding as still as possible so he didn’t jostle bruises and knitting bones, he closed his eyes and retraced his steps through the compound, up into the outside world. He counted steps between doorways, memorized keypad combinations, and thought about which direction he could run that would give him cover. East, he thought, would be best, toward the stand of conifers he passed each time around. It was a bit of a surprise that they hadn’t shot him just to see how quickly he healed from a bullet wound and he doubted they’d hesitate to open fire if he made a break for it. 

But accidents happened. He was always exhausted, beaten, and run ragged when they hauled him outside for more. A stumble would be believable, wouldn’t even be questioned. They were used to picking him off the ground and hauling him back to his cell to bleed. If they were counting on him being too worn down to make a break for it, he’d find a way to prove them wrong. 

Zola’s experiments had to be good for something.


	4. Chapter 4

Each pain and ache turned into a brick and they kept him well supplied.

Each brick put a sliver of distance between him and the world around him. He stopped trying to keep track of how long he’d been there, letting it all blur together like the ebb and flow of a terrible ocean. Less pain, more pain; repeat. He learned to breathe through torn ligaments and fractured ribs. He imagined pulling it out of his muscles and joints, thick and heavy in his hands like clay, and turning all that pain into another piece of his wall. Inside the wall, they couldn’t touch him. He could have a soft bed and blue sky inside the wall, even when he was lying on hard stone with blood dripping down along his nose. All of his memories - home, familiar faces, everything he’d lost - got tucked behind the wall too, safe from the monsters outside his head.

It didn’t matter that he still wasn’t doing what they wanted him to do, whatever  _ that _ was. He could retreat behind the wall and leave their whispering behind him. They seemed more puzzled than angry, as though he’d presented them with an interesting puzzle as much as a challenge. Results didn’t seem to be pressing; they must have all the time in the world and, as long as he stayed inside his wall, he did too.

They couldn’t be bothered to cut his hair and it worked to his advantage, hiding his gaze as he watched for opportunities. He spent most of his time looking at the guards’ knees already so he didn’t think they noticed.

He rolled with the punches, tucked in tight against the rain of batons and boots, and little by little, he stored away a bit of energy. In the elevator, he kept his head bowed, breathing hard under the pack on his back. He thought they filled it with actual bricks. He stumbled over the lip of the elevator door on the way out and counted off the steps to the heavy bunker doors. Whatever they’d been built to withstand, or to keep inside, he didn’t think he wanted to know. It couldn’t be  _ him. _ He’d hardly given them any trouble since they’d pulled him out of his frozen coffin. Even with the metal arm, he doubted he could force his way out.

Occasionally, he wondered if he was already dead and this was Hell. He’d never pictured Hell being this cold.

The sun beat down from above and blazed back up from the icy snow, whiting out the landscape in a brightness that made his eyes water. Ice formed on his eyelashes in a matter of seconds. Wrapped in their fur trimmed uniforms, the guards merely prodded him forward to their well worn track. He’d tried to guess at the mileage a few times, but his mind usually went blank before they finished, unable to do more than put one foot in front of another.

At the far side of the loop, the path curved down before winding back to his godforsaken prison and he had vague flashes of a tree line. Or maybe just a tree. Something to break up the monotony of ice and stone, and maybe an indication of a forest. Of  _ life,  _ out here in the wasteland. 

Around him, the guards slogged along, idle conversation prevented by their desire to keep their faces protected from the bitter cold. Occasionally one of them would grunt or gesture toward the distance. An animal, Bucky hoped, because that would mean something had learned how to survive in this environment, that survival was possible. Or a road. With this level of personnel, the compound had to be resupplied, even if infrequently, and those supplies had to come from somewhere; a road or tracks would point in the right direction. Without a direction, the odds of survival out in the elements would be low.

That didn’t mean he wasn’t going to try. He’d defied impossible odds before.

His boots skidded on ice as they rounded the curve and started down the shallow incline. To his right, about twenty yards from the path, he saw the top of a tall, thinly branched conifer tree, twisted from years in strong winds. Beyond the outcropping could be more trees, which meant cover. If he could get there. The pack would slow him down but might afford him some protection when they tried to shoot him in the back. There were only three; he could disarm them and buy enough time to run.

Heartbeat racing, his ears seemed to fill with a static buzz as they approached the apex of the curve. It was the nearest point to the tree. This was his chance.

Feigning another slip on the ice, he went down on his left knee, reaching out with his right hand to brace against the ground. Unhurried, the guards closed in to prod him back to his feet, so used to the routine that they didn’t reach for their weapons. He brought the first down with a sharp grab and twist, metal fingers giving him an unbreakable grip on the man’s coat. The second, he kicked out with his right leg and swept the guard off his feet. Shrugging off the heavy pack, he threw it at the third guard, letting the weight of it do the work.

He vaulted from the path and ran full out toward the tree. The metal arm kept pulling him to the left and making his balance on the uneven ground far less steady than he preferred, but he was closing the gap.

The first bullet whizzed by, too wide, and sprayed bits of rock when it hit the ground. He heard the crack of the second bullet the same instant a dagger of white hot pain tore into the back of his right thigh and his knee buckled. He hit the ground hard, momentum carrying him over rocks and ice and nearly dumping him headfirst over the rocky outcropping beneath the pine tree. He glimpsed a steep slope leading down toward an adjacent valley carpeted with a dense pine forest.

When the guards reached him, they hauled him to his feet, forced the straps of the pack over his shoulders, and forced him to march the rest of the way back to the compound with blood dripping down the back of his leg. Inside, he understood part of the conversation as they reported his escape attempt. The doctor didn’t seem surprised, only curious about how far Bucky had gotten before they’d shot him and what his reaction had been. He was beginning to doubt the man was a real doctor, unless it was in the same sense as Arnim Zola and was another word for madman. 

He held tight to the image of the forest and tucked it behind his wall with the rest of his memories. The pain as they dug the bullet out of his leg with a scalpel barely registered. More needles. He thought enough to wonder what they injected him with, but he’d probably never know. There was an unfamiliar burn in his veins this time and the doctor kept repeating his series of nonsense words as he worked. They prickled at the edge of his attention, making him wonder if he was fuzzy around the edges because of pain or shock, or something they’d given him. He thought, once, that he looked up and the doctor’s face had been replaced by a twisted, red skull leering down at him, but he blinked and it was gone.

He hoped the war was over. He hoped they’d won and HYDRA had gone down with the Nazis.

He was living proof that wasn’t true.

They left him alone while his leg healed - a toy put up on the shelf -  and the sense of being fuzzy around the edges lingered. He could read through all of the books without needing the translation dictionary now, their pages worn from use. Maybe they’d bring him more if he asked; maybe if he asked in Russian. The thought of asking for books hadn’t occurred to him before. It was obvious that he was utterly at their mercy and they hadn’t shown any sign of caring what he wanted so far, but maybe it couldn’t hurt.

Maybe he could just ask them what they were waiting for; he prayed it wasn’t for his skin to peel off and reveal a monster underneath. 

He tried to think about what he could try next time to make his escape. Hit the guards harder, slow them down longer. Long enough he could make it to the slope and into the trees. The forest loomed in his hazy imagination like a magical world, like his quiet place behind a wall of pain, where he would be free of the doctor and his red notebook. 

When the guards came to lead him from the cell to the training room above, he didn’t ask about more books. He kept his head down. Upstairs, there had been a change. One section of the room was occupied with new equipment and several men, including the doctor, were busy connecting wires and turning knobs. In the center was a chair, or the skeleton of a chair. A chair left behind to decay and rot, only fossilized bones remaining. His mind stuttered, wondering if the chair was like him, captured and captive, with alien parts grafted onto its frame. As if an inanimate chair had concepts like  _ self _ and  _ alien. _ Not even chairs were safe here. 

He recognized those thoughts as unhinged or, at least, detached from sane, normal thoughts he’d have if he wasn’t a prisoner they liked to torment. Going insane in a frozen prison was hardly the worst part of his existence.

A guard prodded him forward with the butt of his rifle in Bucky’s back. It wasn’t a tough guess to know the chair was meant for him. A second guess that he wasn’t going to like it. He wished they’d just shoot him and put him out of his misery, but he wasn’t that lucky. Even after he was dead, they’d probably dissect him for parts. From the snatches of conversation he understood, they didn’t seem to know exactly what the chair was going to do any more than he did, other than not kill him outright. 

He wasn’t grateful.

For the first time since they’d grabbed him, he felt fear. His heart rate ticked up and sweat broke out on his forehead and palms as they maneuvered him into the chair. There were restraints. He didn’t struggle or fight to get away when they strapped him in, only held himself tight, breathing shallow and panicked. They pressed him back into a partially reclined position and he heard gears shifting behind and below him. Unable to do anything but brace himself, he imagined curling up behind his wall, all his happy memories pulled tight to keep them safe from whatever was coming.

The curved arms above the chair rolled down and brought two sets of plates toward his face. The doctor and his helpers moved in close to make adjustments, tweaking small rods until the plates were as close as they could be to his skin without actually touching him. Once they were satisfied with the placement, they retreated to a safer distance to watch.

There was no warning. Pain seared behind his eyes and straight down his spine, lighting up his nerves clear down to his fingertips like someone had poured gasoline into his veins and struck a match. The scream torn from his lungs sounded alien. Back muscles seized each time he tried to take a breath. There were bright, sparking lights and a strange, metallic smell in his nose, and all he could do was scream his way through the endless seconds. He kept screaming after it stopped, running out of air at the same time the plates began to move away from his face.

“Zhelaniye,” the doctor said, his red notebook open in his hands.

_ No, _ he wanted to protest but his throat wouldn’t work properly. All his muscles were trembling with small convulsions, making it impossible to hold still and equally impossible to do anything. He knew he hated those words, hated the pain and violence that always came with them. He hated that he didn’t understand what they wanted.

If they would just tell him what they wanted, he’d give it them. He’d do it. Anything. If it meant they’d stop. If they wouldn’t put him in this chair again. His mouth wouldn’t even form the words to plead with the doctor to stop or to simply kill him rather than whatever they were trying to do. 

If they would just  _ tell him. _

“Rzhavvy.”

He wanted to scream despite the ache in his throat. 

“Semnadtsat.”

He couldn’t do what they wanted if they didn’t tell him what it was.

“Rassvet.”

Drops of sweat or possibly tears slid down his cheeks. They weren’t removing the restraints. Weren’t pulling him from the chair to take him outside and force him to march. It was just the doctor saying the words and waiting for something to happen. Desperate, he forced his confused muscles to move enough to pull against the bands over his arms and shins. He knew there was no hope of escape and none of the guards tried to stop him.

“Pech.”

He barely knew what the words were, what they meant, but he knew they always had consequences. They always led to pain. What were they planning? What could be worse than what they’d already done to him? He struggled in vain, wrenching his arm hard enough that the edges of the restraints cut into his skin. Blood bubbled up from the marks, turning his skin slick as ice.

“Devyat.” The doctor watched him with the detached curiosity of a madman cutting limbs off of lizard simply to see it writhe. “Dobroserdechnyy.”

Panting, he sunk back against the chair, feeling more than ever that he was surrounded by monsters. Even the arms of the chair were now a gaping maw that would reach down to bite into his skull, tearing him apart from the inside.

“Vozvrashcheniye na rodinu.”

He braced himself, recognizing the words even if he didn’t understand them.

“Odin.” 

His entire mind was nothing but white, blinding fear.

“Gruzovoy vagon.”

Above him, the arms began to move again, bringing the plates back to surround his face. He jerked, slicing his cheek open on one of the edges. A broken sob slipped out before there was nothing left but the pain and he was screaming again.

Everything after that was lost.

**  

There was a buzzing noise in the background. Quiet.

It seemed familiar.

Nothing else was familiar. There were textures and smells, all of them strange and new. Some of them were attached to him, he’d realized. The concept of having pieces and parts that seemed to move of their own accord was strange.

But the buzzing was familiar. It felt familiar in a way he didn’t understand. When one of his limbs slipped from the edge of the surface he was lying on, his knuckles brushed against something solid. It was a pile of objects, small and rectangular. Stiffly, he pulled them out and lifted them up to look at. They opened and inside was a cascade of thin sheets.

They felt familiar too, like the buzzing.

He stared at them for a long time before a word filtered through the static in his head.  _ Books. _ These were books. They were his books. He opened one of them and watched the neatly printed shapes swirl for awhile before they also settled down into  _ words. _ Books held words and something called  _ stories. _ It seemed a strange thing to know, but a familiar thing too. Maybe  _ he _ was a story. 

For a long time there was only the buzzing and the books. More bits of familiar surfaced through the haze. Men brought him a tray of food and then he remembered porridge; he remembered that the uncomfortable feeling inside him was hunger.  

The food was always the same and other than bringing him food, the men left him to his books and his stories. One man came with a red notebook that plucked a memory deep in his mind and made him shiver like a cold wind had run fingers up his spine. There were other memories too. Some dark, some bright; some cold, some warm. He learned the shape of them if not what they meant. The man with the notebook asked him for his name once, but there weren’t any shapes in his head that felt like a  _ name. _ Maybe it was behind the wall. He could feel it in the back of his mind, feel something covered over and hidden. He didn’t know what was beyond the wall. 

“Soldat,” the man said, pointing at his chest.

His tongue was heavy in his mouth, but it moved when he tried. “Soldat,” he repeated. The man’s next question was nothing more than a jumble of words. “Я не понимаю,” he said slowly, the words forming in his mouth without knowing how he knew them.

The man didn’t respond, staring at him with an odd look on his face. Eventually, he made a small nod and a smaller smile before gathering up his red notebook and his tools. At the door made of bars, he looked back and said something about  _ tomorrow. _ It stirred a sense of familiarity, like the buzzing and books, but in way that felt sticky on his skin. A memory he didn’t want.

When he woke again, lying on the same bed, he heard the familiar buzzing. He recognized pain in nearly all of his limbs. Cautiously, he sat up and began to inspect his skin. There were bruises on his arms and spattered over his ribs. His knuckles were raw and more abrasions were angry red on his forearm and knees. Aches when he moved alerted him to injured muscles and tendons; more bruises. He tried to remember where he’d gotten the injuries but his mind was a blank darkness where those memories should have been.

The man with the red notebook returned and asked for his name.

“Soldat,” he answered, then looked down at his knuckles before asking. “Я не понимаю?”

_ Training _ was the man’s answer. He raised the notebook and tapped a finger against the black star on the cover, as if that answered all of the questions. There would be more training once he’d healed from his injuries.

He nearly asked what he was training for, but the words felt sour in his mouth. 

Instead, he asked if he could have more books to read. 

**

The report to Kraskevich was brief and carefully worded.

The subject continued to make slow progress. More quickly now that an effective treatment had been devised to counteract the subject’s resistance. 

Mikhail Karpov glanced over at the open notebook on his desk, verifying the information before he jotted down an estimation of how long he believed it would take to complete the subject’s conditioning. The experimental drugs and methodology recommended by Arnim Zola were slow to work, but he believed even that would be accelerated by the new treatment. After only a short time, the subject was already showing a marked increase in efficiency.

It had been a puzzle, certainly. The American had remained stubbornly unwilling to do real harm to his captors, regardless of what they subjected him to. He’d defended himself, certainly, but he’d never attacked with a clear intent to harm or to kill. It simply didn’t seem to be in him. According to Kraskevich, his first impulse had been to  _ make friends. _ It was foolish and very American.

Then again, none of them had realized how quickly he was gaining an understanding of Russian; the American had hidden that from them. It made Karpov wonder what else he might be hiding. It was enough progress for now that the treatments increased his suggestibility, making him far more amenable to orders.

They were, perhaps, not so far away from success as he’d thought.

 


	5. Chapter 5

“Soldat.”

He pushed up with his left arm, getting to his feet with a soundless grunt of pain. On his feet, he looked around. He was the only one left standing. The other men who trained with him were on the ground where he’d put them, some of them moaning or panting, curled around broken bones or lesser, still painful, injuries. He held still as they worked the straps of a heavy pack over his shoulders, gaze straight ahead and already thinking about the world above.

The marches were the only times he saw the sun and breathed fresh air. Cold, always cold, but it didn’t smell of stone and sweat. His mind itched when he was outside, like an ant crawling around somewhere in the bottom of a deep well. It niggled at him, that imaginary ant, but he put his focus on his orders.

There were no surprises in his routine, although sometimes he felt like time had skipped and leapt around him without touching him. A feeling that this had happened before and also that he’d missed a step on the stairs. He woke up with injuries he didn’t remember, but he believed them when they told him it was from a training session. The injuries felt familiar, at least, even if he didn’t remember the particulars. He knew how to answer when they asked for his name and he knew to follow the guards out into the bright, cold air.

Away from the stone and steel, from the smell of rust and chemicals, the imaginary ant felt more like an imaginary bee buzzing around inside his skull, banging against the sides as it tried to find its way out. He never saw any flowers; he didn’t think much grew here other than the deformed pine trees to the east.

His breath fogged in the air in front of him as he marched, bent forward against the weight of the pack on his back. Under his boots, he saw imprints of tread here and there. Places where he’d stepped before and set a pattern into the frost. How many times had he done this? A lock of hair swung forward into the edge of his vision. It felt wrong and jarring to see long hair, except that it had been long when he’d woken up, hadn’t it? The incongruity felt like a crack in the earth beneath his feet. 

Or a crack in a wall.

He stumbled, a boot sliding over slick rock, and saw one of the guards tense, his fingers inching toward his weapon. Regaining his footing, he kept his head down and watched the guards out of the corners of his eyes. 

They’d done this before. How many times?

He’d slipped. Flashes of memories bled out through the crack in the wall. Punches, gunshots. The guards hitting the ground and getting back up. Never far enough. He saw the familiar tree in the distance, his mind of blur of all the times they’d rounded this corner. All the times he’d raced for the cover of the trees and they’d shot him down. Phantom pains burned in the back of his thigh, in his back and right shoulder and his gut. Why did they keep bringing him out here if he kept trying to escape? Like giving him a longer leash only to bring him up short at the end, never quite close enough to freedom. 

He chewed at his bottom lip, ignoring the ice attempting to form. Was this what lurked in all those tucks and twists of time? When he woke up with unfamiliar aches and pains? They took it away from him every time. How? It seemed impossible but it felt too real. Wipe his memories and bring him back again for another round of whatever game they were playing.

His mistake had been to leave the guards alive.

There was no emotion attached to the realization, only that it seemed such a simple solution that he couldn’t believe he hadn’t thought of it before. Only three men, lightly armed. He’d taken more than that and even with the heavy pack, he knew he was stronger and faster than they were. But he’d always held back. He knew  _ that  _ the same way he knew he’d done this all before, with a certainty born of instinct rather than reason.

He waited until they’d made the turn. Until he saw tension go out of the guards’ shoulders the slightest amount. They shouldn’t have left his hands free. The heavy pack swung as he moved and knocked one guard to the ground as he took hold of another’s head and twisted, sharp enough that the cracking vertebrae was loud in the chilly air. He caught another by the throat and his metal fist caved in the man’s skull with one punch. The last went breathless with a punch to the chest, ribs snapping with the impact, and he gasped out his last breaths. None of them had a chance to get a shot off. 

The world was quiet after that. They would know when none of them returned, but silence bought him time.

He reached the rocky outcropping where the familiar tree clung tenaciously to life in a barren world and dropped down. Gravity did the most of the work on the way down the hillside, his boots skidding over rock and ice, left arm out to brush and push and steady as he slid. There was forest below and he hit the flatter ground with determination, leaning into a steady run that warmed his muscles. The forest held a thicker, heavier silence; spent needles muffled the sound of his boots. He could feel where the ground continued to slope down away from the high plateau and the mountains and he followed, letting it pull him like a tumbling stream.   

At a distance that was far, but not far enough, he stopped to catch his breath and slip the pack from his shoulders and inspect the contents. He’d expected bricks. Instead, he found what must’ve been a basic soldier’s pack with rations, a metal canteen still full with water, a heavy coat, and scant survival gear. Beggars weren’t choosers. He pulled on the coat and adjusted the hood to cover as much of his face as possible. 

The cold wouldn’t kill him, but it would freeze him, making him easy to catch. He knew they’d come after him as surely as he’d known he could kill those men. 

Once covered, he fished a utility knife from the bottom of the pack before pulling it back onto his shoulders. Maybe they’d gotten lazy and just grabbed one of their standard packs, maybe they hadn’t cared either way, but they’d given him what he needed to survive if he stayed on his toes. The food wouldn’t last long and he doubted there was much living in this place, but a forest would have some sort of life. If he kept moving, he’d find it. 

Or he’d find death. He didn’t think it mattered much which one it was. All of his thoughts had tunneled into a single purpose;  _ escape. _ Resuming at a walking pace, he let his gaze roam over the trees, the sky, the ground, watching for signs of life. This didn’t feel familiar. There were no echoes of trees bouncing around his head. 

When the sun began to slip beneath the edge of sky, he hunted for shelter. A way to keep the ground from stealing his body heat; a way to stay hidden from what might be after him long enough to get some sleep. He had a headstart, but they outnumbered him and could cast a wide net. They knew the area, knew mountains and valleys and roads; he would have to find his own way. After searching, he hunkered down in a narrow space between trees that had filled up several feet deep with pine needles. It wasn’t comfortable but it was safe and cozy enough to wedge the pack between tree trunks and use it as a pillow.

He wondered what they’d do with his books. There were stacks of books under his bed. Some in Russian, some in German, Italian, and a language he didn’t even recognize. One was a primer for a child learning Mandarin. Why bother teaching him how to read in other languages if all the guards spoke Russian?

It was almost dark when he blinked and realized that his mind had gone blank, all his thoughts lost into the depths of a maze. For several minutes, he wondered where he was and how he’d gotten there, half expecting the man with the red notebook to appear and ask him for his name. He shivered and pulled the coat tighter around his throat. Thinking about the man with the notebook left a chill under his skin had nothing to do with the endless winter around him. His mind kept skipping until the darkness began to lift. Some of it had been sleep. Enough that he was stiff and took several minutes working feeling back into his limbs after climbing out of his hiding spot. Turning into the rising sun, he kept going, following the slope. 

The ground leveled out around mid-morning. He stopped long enough to dig through the pack for the water and rations, not tasting whatever it was he set between his teeth. He’d need to think about food soon. Squinting at the bare earth beneath the trees, he thought there might be rabbit tracks. He’d tried catching rabbits before. Struck by the knowledge that he knew how to make a snare from branches and a shoelace, he froze still, but the memory didn’t come clear. Someone had taught him. In a life before this. 

_ Before. _

He walked blindly, not aware enough to keep as quiet as possible. There had been a before. Before the marches and the guards and the man with the red notebook. He’d had a name and there was something enormous, something important, walled off in the back of his mind where he couldn’t reach it.  

They’d  _ done this _ to him. The man with the red notebook and his cursed words. They’d carved him into pieces and buried parts of him away. No matter how he clawed at the blank surface inside his head, there was nothing more than a crack. Enough for him to know that something was terribly wrong; that he shouldn’t be here. That there was an Elsewhere he belonged and a place where the pain and violence weren’t normal. He’d been stolen from that Elsewhere and brought here; he knew that down to his very bones.

Rage and helpless confusion kept him moving at a brisk pace well into the afternoon. The trees were thicker here and he started to see sturdy, tough brush in mounds beneath the cover of branches. Warmer; lower altitude; closer to habitable. Overhead, he heard the far off cry of an eagle searching for prey.

A fallen tree provided a decent seat when he stopped to rest and drink more water, chewing at the tasteless hardtack from the kit. Gradually, he began to pick up the small sounds in the silence. The whisper and creak of the trees around him and bird calls somewhere far away. He closed his eyes as he tried to pinpoint the direction of the birds. If he could follow them, they’d lead him to a section of the forest that supported life, maybe enough for him to find food. There was flint in the pack once he was far enough away from the bunker to risk a fire. He daydreamed about being warm for awhile longer, making him wish the trees would open even though he knew the only safety he had was beneath their branches.

Rousing himself to keep moving, he checked the sky for the location of the sun and set himself toward the east again, away from the compound. It hadn’t gotten truly dark the night before, which put him in the far north. He’d assumed as much from the mountains and snow, but it was confirmation. It felt like he knew more, that if he could only wrench the information from his sluggish brain, he’d know where he was.

A flash in his peripheral vision jerked him out of his thoughts, but there was nothing there when he turned to look. Frowning, he kept going, listening to the silence around him and hearing nothing.

Some time later, he saw it again. This time he was certain it was a creature. Fast; silent. He walked cautiously into a clearing and paused, holding his breath as he strained to hear even the slightest sound.  _ There. _ Slowly, he eased the pack off of his shoulders and adjust his grip on the handle of the knife. He wanted something solid to put his back against but there was nothing suitable. One step at a time, he turned in a circle, sweeping his gaze over the trees and underbrush for what he knew had to be out there.

He missed it the first time, as still as it was, the gray of its fur camouflaging it against forest and rocky ground. It was lean, with ribs showing through the thick pelt, colored like snow strewn over dark stone. Both ears were alert and pointed forward, pale copper eyes bright in the shadows.

It would outrun him if he tried and he didn’t doubt it could bring him down. Its long, lanky legs made it waist high with all four paws on the ground and he wouldn’t underestimate the force behind sixty pounds of wolf. Was it alone? Or were there more, closing in around him. With so little life to be found, it must be hungry. Enough to follow him rather than search out smaller prey. 

Vaguely, he thought it was beautiful.

When it came for him, he took a half step back and braced himself, watching the arc of its steps as it came closer as though the whole world had slowed down. The first lunge was only testing him, trying to determine what kind of prey he was. He dodged and swung around, not looking away as it bared its teeth, a low growl punctuating in the still air. It lunged again. He swung at it with his metal fist, connecting with the solid muscle of its shoulder and sending it off at an angle. It wasn’t enough to slow it down for more than few seconds, hunger overriding any other instinct. 

He was ready when it lunged for his throat, bringing his left arm up so the fangs clamped down over metal. Hot, sour breath washed over his face and he met the golden eyes squarely as he brought up his right hand, letting the wolf’s momentum knock him down onto his back. The tip of the knife sliced through the thick pelt as he felt. It scraped against bone before slipping between ribs and into vulnerable tissue. He felt claws scrabble at his chest, a thin whine in its throat, before the fight went out of it in a woosh of air. Carefully, he rolled to the left, using both arms to get enough leverage against the unresponsive weight. It whined again, breathing labored and unable to get back onto its feet. He watched the eyes dart, a silent, frantic struggle against what it knew was coming.

The wall inside him cracked again and pain came pouring out of it. He hunched over on his knees, letting go of the knife and pulling his left arm free of its jaws. Fingers shaking, he reached out to cradle the wolf’s head in his left hand, digging his right into the thick fur over its neck. It watched him, chest rising and falling more slowly now.    

“I’m sorry,” he whispered brokenly. 

Part of his mind pointed out that now he had  _ food, _ but another part reeled back in revulsion at the callous indifference. He’d killed something beautiful, something innocent. He stroked a hand over its ears, trying to say something soothing. Blood was spreading out over the frost covered earth. He could smell it, thick and bitter. 

“My name,” he choked out, “is Bucky. My name is...my name.” The words turned to half swallowed sobs when the wolf exhaled for the last time and the copper eyes turned glassy, quickly hazing over.

For a long time, he stayed on his knees beside the dead wolf, staring at nothing. The wall inside his mind. They hadn’t put it there,  _ he had. _ It was all that was left of him. Of who he’d been before. The training, the marches; the  _ chair. _ He stared at the pack, so conveniently filled with what he’d need to survive this terrain, and horror began to curdle in his throat. They’d been waiting for something. They’d beaten him and tortured him and taken away his memories, and they’d sent him out to march with everything he’d need to escape.

This was what they’d been waiting for, he thought numbly. For him to become a killer.

He climbed unsteadily to his feet and walked without caring much about his direction. It felt like a hundred tiny pieces falling into place. He hadn’t been willing to kill the guards holding him before. They couldn’t beat it out of him so they’d burned it out of him instead. He still couldn’t bring himself to feel for the three lifeless guards he’d left behind, not as much as he felt for the lone wolf.

They weren’t going to let him go.

Realizing he’d stopped, he blinked. He could see the sun toward the horizon. He could see the horizon. Ahead of him was a set of cliffs and beyond that, a valley that stretched out to the edge of the world. There were mountains to the north and more trees carpeted the valley below. He watched without knowing what he was looking for until its absence became glaring. No rising smoke, no roads cutting through the trees. No signs of life or civilization. 

No way out.

He stood still, the sun setting over the valley. The bunker wasn’t the prison.  _ This _ was the prison. There was nothing but emptiness for miles in all directions. The mountains and cold were more effective than any bars. He could get lost out here, vanishing into the ice for years. For decades. Forever. But they’d never stop looking; they’d find him and take him back. The forest was an escape but it wasn’t a way out. They wanted a killer. One who didn’t question or remember who he’d been before. He thought of the books they’d brought him. What reason would they have to give him books in other languages if they meant to keep him here?

No. They wouldn’t keep him here. Once they could control him, they would put him to use. They would send him back into the world as a weapon. He was a fixed point in space, every direction closed off to him. Every direction but one. Forward. 

Time.

They’d make use of him - terribly, horribly - and someday, somehow, there would be a chance. A way out. The only way out was  _ through. _ Through whatever they did to him, whatever they made him into.

He watched the sun slip over the horizon, still close enough to light up the night with a dull glow. His joints were stiff from standing and ice crystals had formed on this lips and nose. The night never grew any darker. He thought he heard a wolf howl in the distance, too far away to worry that he’d left his only weapon behind in the clearing. He didn’t deserve what was coming any more than the wolf he’d killed. They were both victims.

The sound of voices reached him near dawn. He’d known it wouldn’t be long. He closed his eyes and began collecting everything of  _ himself, _ everything he wanted to keep, and imagined rebuilding his wall brick by brick. Higher, thicker; enough that he wouldn’t even be able to find himself. Until there was nothing left of him but a reflection of the endless winter. 

When they come, it was the man with the red notebook, speaking his cursed words. “Soldat,” he said. There were twenty guns pointed at his head, waiting.

He turned, neck stiff from cold. “Я готов отвечать.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Huge shout out to Crystallized-Iron for the fantastic art and being awesome throughout the whole process!  
> And to MostFacinorous for being the bestest beta reader. :)


End file.
